Well yeah Russia needs to prepare in advance and stop being dumbasses lol. If they wouldnt be digging trenches right now, they would have learnt nothing from this war. And your point proved that things will be harder as they are prepping for a clash instead of being surprised by a counterattack.Russia is digging trenches in Crimea right now. So far as winter goes, this is the best prepared and supplied army Russia will have ever faced during winter. This isn't Operation Barbarossa where hundreds of thousands of men have nothing but summer gear in dead winter. I don't see Russia being able to supply forces in Crimea much longer. Russia may wind up getting literally starved out of Crimea sooner than later if Ukraine takes out the bridge again.
So far as the population being Russian friendly, I wonder how many civilians are still even there? We all saw the exodus.
Sevastopol stays getting molested by Ukrainian drones. Me thinks that taking Crimea is closer than you think. Two years sounds kinda silly considering what we've seen thus far but I could be wrong. Time will tell...
The Kherson retreat means that their leadership has some moment where they remember to use their brains. That means that rather than trying to halt Ukr counterattack and lose thousands of lives to prevent the inevitable, they regrouped while keeping Kherson still at shelling range and probably full or EODs. You talk about Crimea in a couple of months yet Kherson City is not even secured...
How do you go to Crimea without securing territories West of the Dnipr first ??? Ukraine downed their ships at the beginning of the war and Odessa waters are heavily mined. Do you think they'll do landings, Normandy style ? And from where ? How do you want Ukr to reach Crimea in two months if it took the counter attack two months to just reach Kherson outskirts ?
Like look at the pic below, on the Southern front, it took two months for Ukraine to reclaim the blue parts and you want them to take Crimea in the more or less the same amount of time ?
I don't understand what you see there that make you so confident