Hapless

Points to @Hapless for calling it.  Looks like the month of Aug was a shaping operation for this.  We don't see any punchy western style spearpoint manoeuvre yet - and I am of a mind that we likely won't.  This is instead a steady increase of tactical pressure and projection of friction, now that pre-conditions have been set.  The operational objective is likely everything north of the Dnipro with a focus on Kherson (obviously), however, the UA has to be thinking about the next bound or they risk simply winding up at a new border.
Now let's see if it works.  

Hmm, yes and no.  The primary advantage of the pontoon is crossing speed and weight - it is pretty slow driving but still faster than a ferry, and you can traffic more vehicles continuously as opposed to discrete crossings.  As to survivability, the ferry is likely better as it is moving and can traffic from multiple sites, the pontoon bridge is fixed.  They both use the same sections, which are not really designed to take too many hits before bad things start to happen.
This whole effort by the RA shows that the strikes on the existing bridge infrastructure have been effective - in case anyone was wondering.  They have sighted the pontoon bridge very well, butted up against the existing concrete bridge superstructure gives it a lot of anchors against current (which is pretty slow) and some indirect fires.
They have also set it up correctly, on the downstream side of the bridge, so if a section gets hit too badly they can disconnect and let it simply float downstream, and replace.
If I were the UA I would wait until it had some decent traffic it on it - knowing the Russians they will be sloppy in crossing management - and then hit it with DPICM.  You will likely bag some vehicles, which will have to be cleared and do damage all along the length of the bridge.  This significantly raises the repair and maint bill while also stressing the entire structure.  Alternately the UA have already demonstrated what they can do with PGM artillery so simply hit the thing along its length - the RA will run out of pontoons before the UA runs out of ammo.

Bit more on the same bridge strike at the end of this twitter column that looks like it shows more. I count 8 big hits on the bridge- plus something hitting the river near the start and something smaller that might be a cook-off towards the end.
Also a windy day down in Kherson, so maybe the guy reporting on the pontoon and ferry linked earlier missed a rendezvous with destiny.

Hmm, that makes some sense. I assume each section is anchored separately (to the main bridge too), so switching the damaged ones should be relatively easy. So the next question is - how many rockets can one section eat before it becomes unusable? If GMLRS can be set up to explode inside the pontoon, it would probably demolish it thoroughly, compartmentalization or not. Unless the pontoons are filled with some floating foam? This would make singing them a lot harder I think.
Edit:
I just looked closer at the video - these are not pontoons, they just combined together a number of river barges and built a crossing on top of them. Now this means that there's no significant compartmentalization in them at all, as these are purely civilian vessels. And if one sinks, raising it ans moving out of the line won't be that easy for sure, these are massive. I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens after the first strike on them.
Oh, and I wonder if with the delay fuse set to max, could GMLRS go through the entire barge and explode underneath it? It would be crazily devastating I think...

Some footage of pontoon construction and ferry close alongside the Antonovsky Bridge:
Not exactly new stuff, but a closer look than I think we've seen before. No clue on the date. Might be some indication of damage (ie. things sticking out) at about 0:24 looking along the bridge, but the angles seem tightly controlled to avoid showing anything particulalry interesting.

Does give a good idea of how much bridging equipment is necessary for this though- given that these are higher level assets you have to wonder how much this construction is reducing Russian river crossing options elsewhere.

Sultan Command Vehicle or Samaritan Ambulance. British CVRT variant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_Vehicle_Reconnaissance_(Tracked)

Gonna climb up on a hill, dig in and say we've been watching the offensive for the last few weeks or so.

It's just getting hard to draw a line between traditional pre-offensive shaping operations and the potential for the long-range precision deep battle to be decisive in and of itself.

I like the thinking, let's keep that up, however - there are issues
Ok, so let's unpack this a bit .
Area.  So a mechanized combat team in the advance over open country has up to a 2km frontage - giver or take.  We then need to extend that bubble to at least 8km, so double the range of the ATGM, so that the next tactical bound is secured, or at least scanned, before the mech force gets there.  So adding that all up we are talking an op box of about 16 sq kms, or in more tactical terms: 16,000,000 sq ms.  Why sq ms?  Well a 2-man ATGM team such as Javelin, takes up about 4 sq m (and I am being generous - but maybe they have quad or buggy for quick get away).  So the game here is to try and spot two humans, with little or zero vehicles that take up a 4 sq m area in an overall area of 16 million sq ms...and sustain it.
Finding.  Finding two humans in cover on the a conventional battlefield is still the third hardest ISR challenge that exists.  Even with TI, which is not designed to find people it is designed to find vehicles, is going to be severely challenged in doing this.  The average human being runs at 36 and change degrees C, which is only about 10 degrees hotter than ambient air in summer in temperate regions.  Then they wear clothes, modern uniforms actually are designed for some of this (https://www.innovationintextiles.com/protective/hohenstein-develops-textiles-for-screening-against-ir-radiation-for-use-in-military-uniforms/).  Next they are trained to stay under tree canopy, or dig into the ground, tall grass etc.  So this is not like those wands at the airport that are going to squawk when they find your keys.  A number of 500m was tossed around for a Tac UAV to be able to spot a human with TI, but I seriously doubt it if that human is half decently trained and equipped.  UAVs are the best bet, but it will not be easy by any stretch.  Those humans on the ATGM-side do not have the same problem as mech is huge, hot and loud - we can see them from space-based now - so this is not an advantageous exercise for the attacker from the get go...tale as old as time. 
Fixing.  The next major problem with the proposal is the role of SF "infiltration" as the lead edge of this screen.  I like where this is going, very hybrid, however: 1) that is a lot of "SF" - in reality decently trained light infantry would fill this role - to cover off all that ground, even doing "spot" close recce.  They are also going to take casualties so they will need medivac and support, Sustaining this is not small but doable.  2) The entire mech force can now move at the speed of "SF Infiltration" which is damned slow compared to mech advances - think walking speed.  So now a mech force which is designed to punch holes and advance quickly to an enemies rear areas to bring the righteous hand of gawd almighty to REMFs is crawling behind light infantry infiltration...kinda defeats the point of mech in the first place.
Finishing.  One big piece missing from the diagrams is indirect fires.   The logic of spotting small ATGM teams and then dropping the sky on them - rinse and repeat, makes sense even if it is at a human crawl.  However, that nasty indirect fire points in two directions.  The logistics train for a 2 man ATGM team hiding on 4 sq ms is pretty modest - like bag of trail mix and some toilet paper, modest.  The logistical train for this proposed hybrid advance mech model is pretty significant, and will also be seen from space.  So unless that SF infiltration extends out past artillery range, the tail of this mech force, the mech force itself, and with HIMARs, the parking garage said mech force was hiding in before it moved out, are going to get lit up and blown all to hell before the ATGM teams stop bird watching and start shooting. 
So we are back at Fog Eating Snow.
Why bring the mech force along at all?  In fact until you completely break an enemy line past the artillery support distance, mech forces would be held back until pre-conditions are met, namely - degrade enemy ISR, degrade indirect fires, collapse logistical system and crack the line.  This is firepower-attrition-to-manoeuvre, not the other way around which is in all our doctrine - [although honestly, I have to ask myself when have we ever actually done that?  We always lead with an air campaign that makes the Valkyries look like a chicken dance.] 
Anyway, SF infiltration, yes...slow but proven one of the few real ways to advance in this war.  Infiltration with all sorts of ISR to find, and then isolate any heavier force concentration - going to be a lot of screening battles, but their sneaky peeky ATGM teams do not matter...cause we didn't bring any "Ts" during this phase.  Instead of WW1 levels of dumb massed fires, back up that infiltration with precision fires to shtomp anything that they can find with accuracy - rinse and repeat, and continue to support with deep strike on anything that even looks high value - particularly C4ISR, EW, Logistics and throw in an airfield or two for the sunbathers.
You project this as a series of tactical undecidings of their operational integrity, until their system starts to collapse.  Here breadth is likely more important than speed.  You project corrosive force along their entire operational system, and when they buckle...then you send in the mech/armor to do the deep stabby work, before they can re-establish a defence line, tempo here will still matter...I think.
It is a theory, at least.  I have no idea if it would work - and it is not without problems of its own.

Gonna climb up on a hill, dig in and say we've been watching the offensive for the last few weeks or so.

It's just getting hard to draw a line between traditional pre-offensive shaping operations and the potential for the long-range precision deep battle to be decisive in and of itself.

Oh man I am going to steal that and then sue Hapless for plagiarism later…
This is building on deep-strike as the new form of manoeuvre, and negative decision campaigning.

Gonna climb up on a hill, dig in and say we've been watching the offensive for the last few weeks or so.

It's just getting hard to draw a line between traditional pre-offensive shaping operations and the potential for the long-range precision deep battle to be decisive in and of itself.

Gonna climb up on a hill, dig in and say we've been watching the offensive for the last few weeks or so.

It's just getting hard to draw a line between traditional pre-offensive shaping operations and the potential for the long-range precision deep battle to be decisive in and of itself.

Gonna climb up on a hill, dig in and say we've been watching the offensive for the last few weeks or so.

It's just getting hard to draw a line between traditional pre-offensive shaping operations and the potential for the long-range precision deep battle to be decisive in and of itself.

Gonna climb up on a hill, dig in and say we've been watching the offensive for the last few weeks or so.

It's just getting hard to draw a line between traditional pre-offensive shaping operations and the potential for the long-range precision deep battle to be decisive in and of itself.

Gonna climb up on a hill, dig in and say we've been watching the offensive for the last few weeks or so.

It's just getting hard to draw a line between traditional pre-offensive shaping operations and the potential for the long-range precision deep battle to be decisive in and of itself.

Gonna climb up on a hill, dig in and say we've been watching the offensive for the last few weeks or so.

It's just getting hard to draw a line between traditional pre-offensive shaping operations and the potential for the long-range precision deep battle to be decisive in and of itself.

Gonna climb up on a hill, dig in and say we've been watching the offensive for the last few weeks or so.

It's just getting hard to draw a line between traditional pre-offensive shaping operations and the potential for the long-range precision deep battle to be decisive in and of itself.

Gonna climb up on a hill, dig in and say we've been watching the offensive for the last few weeks or so.

It's just getting hard to draw a line between traditional pre-offensive shaping operations and the potential for the long-range precision deep battle to be decisive in and of itself.

Gonna climb up on a hill, dig in and say we've been watching the offensive for the last few weeks or so.

It's just getting hard to draw a line between traditional pre-offensive shaping operations and the potential for the long-range precision deep battle to be decisive in and of itself.

I think it's time for all the folks who have been focused on land war to read some naval history! In particular, Ian Toll's The Conquering Tide offers an example of exactly the sort of friction projection leading to collapse that you're describing at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. It also details how we build a military that was built around anti-friction capabilities.
At the tactical level: The friction of having to fly their Zeroes down the slot to engage Henderson field meant that a huge fraction of Japanese aviation losses were operational as opposed to combat for the duration of the Solomons campaign. Weather was the real killer. We projected more of that friction on them by degrading airfields further down the slot so that the Japanese would have to engage at long range. We built a system robust against that sort friction by incorporating self-sealing fuel tanks and by aggressively using PBY Catalinas and submarines to rescue downed airmen and return them to flying units.
At the operational level: we ran two offensive operations - the push in the southwest pacific under MacArthur towards Hollandia and Rabaul and the central pacific under Nimitz towards Saipan. This tick-tock operational cadence forced null decisions on the Japanese: the couldn't decide which offensives to mass against and consequently kept their battle fleet in being. That null decision also meant that the Japanese moved their ships around frequently without committing them to battle. More operational losses (and submarines!) and wasted fuel, which they had little of.
At the strategic level: our undersea blockade imposed enormous friction on the whole Japanese war industry - it's better to sink oilers than capital ships because without fuel, capital ships are lovely hotels. The Japanese navy bemoaned this, calling it the Hotel Yamato, because it would be too expensive to have it sortie regularly. Once the 3rd/5th fleet got up and running, that undersea blockade became something like modern deep strike. We could hit anywhere in the Japanese Empire with little warning, and we chose to disrupt their plane production and staging infrastructure regularly. That forced the Japanese to concede lots of territory without fighting for it, and to fight ineffectively and without reinforcement where they did decide to fight.
The whole Pacific Campaign was cumulativist friction projection onto the Japanese until their war machine collapsed into an armed mob. Of course, we could do that because our industrial might allowed us to put together the 3rd/5th fleet, essentially producing two whole additional US Navies during the war.
Here are some stay thoughts:
1. If your strategy is negative-decision focused, how do you maintain home-front morale without decisive battles? Abstract friction is great if you understand it. How do you sell that to people?
2. In WW1, the negative-decision strategy was one of exhaustion. Is there a negative-decision strategy that can win without that? We ultimately did engage in annihilational battles against the Japanese because we badly overmatched them by '44, and it still took a pair of nuclear weapons. Can you win without exhausting your enemy of without the shock and awe of some sort of annihilational capability?
3. What does a modern anti-friction capability look like in a military? What's the equivalent of self-sealing tanks and PBY Catalinas?

Another thing I've been thinking about is the idea of "decisiveness", both during a battle and surrounding a battle. In the ancient world, to use @The_Capt's language, there were two ways to force a positive decision to a war: deliver a siege to the enemy's capital or destroy their army in the field. The defender had a choice whether to fight in the field, and could (in limited ways) degrade opposing LOCs. But ancient wars were decided by a pitched battle or a successful siege. And often by a single one of those things. Ancient societies (with the exception of the Romans, to everyone's consternation) were not capable of regenerating meaningful combat power during a campaign season. So if you win one battle handily or successfully deliver your siege, that normative decides the war.
The theory that you produce a decision all at once with a single blow has continued to be popular into the modern age even though I'd submit that it is no longer possible against anything like a motivated peer combatant. The Japanese were obsessed with it, hence Pearl Harbor, Midway, and the Philippine Sea, and Leyte, and the sortie of the Yamato. American commanders broke both ways: Spruance was an avowed cumulativist, and didn't seek to annihilate the Japanese fleet after the Philippine Sea, while Halsey chased the carriers at Leyte. Spruance is, I think well vindicated in no seeking a decision-in-one-action.
Certainly WW1 vindicated the cumulativist approach at the strategic level, WW2 reinforced that, and we're seeing the same thing in Ukraine: Russia's hopes of a single strategically decisive battle failed quickly, because modern forces can force a negative decision more effectively that they could even in WW1. It seems like the question on the table now is whether forcing a positive decision is possible for either side at the operational or tactical levels.
Even at the operational and tactical levels, the ability of the defender to produce negative decisions or undecide things is driven by the size of the bubble of lethality that they can project and how that compares to the bubble of lethality the attacker projects. Again, leaning on naval combat in the Pacific, the Japanese designed ships to decide a tactical battle in a single blow: night fighting with long range torpedoes. The planned operations to decide operational battles in a single blow: the destruction of the USN. They were spectacularly unsuccessful at this, because our carrier air power projected a bubble of lethality (except at night in close waters) that allowed us to refuse battle whenever we wanted.
I think one dynamic we're seeing now is that the undecision modern warfare imposed at the strategic level is now filtering down to the tactical level. I'm not sure how you end a war once that happens?

Ninja'd Looking forward to more of this account though.
I don't think any of it is surprising at this stage, but it does highlight a background issue. For want of a better description, there is a kind of 'zombie' aspect to the Russian army, where they don't really conform to Western expectations.

Perhaps for the troops north of Kherson the fact that they're existing with their logistics practically severed, abandoned by their commanders, scavenging for food, living in unsanitary conditions and slowly succumbing to disease isn't the kind of military disaster that we would envisage... it's just like being back in barracks.

Hiya Folks,
Some of you may remember those of us who put up the Red Army Studies site way back in the '00s or '10s. We had a host of files from the Soviet Military History Journal of the 1980s in pdf format that were on a very very slow server. I decided to make those files available once more by sharing them all through a shared Google folder. Everything within that folder can be viewed by anyone with the link below:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/125aCdAW_f5wXKx9jns5hzSJEN9Be5hVN?usp=sharing
There are also a number of handbooks and regs for both the Soviets and Germans in WWII. May they prove helpful in some capacity.
Best regards,
Grisha

Except the part where Sergie then double crosses you and sells you back to Russian security for another bag of rubbles.  Much better to put a bullet into Sergie's vodka soaked brain and vaporize him when the whole show goes up.
It comes from the observations so far that:
 - The UA is not supposed to have a high trajectory/high speed missile with this range (but might).
- No reports of a cruise missile, which is odd given the daylight nature of the strike.
- No UA aircraft reported.
- Russian fire safety "whoopsie" does not match the numbers or dispersion of craters.
So people are thinking SOF action.  Pretty long shot from where I am sitting, but is it possible?  Sure. 

I feel like the Russian's biggest concern right now is cutting the internet connection to Crimea and getting a barrage battalion to the Kerch bridge to stop all those tourists disappearing into the Motherland with footage.