Ukraine risks heavy losses if counter-attack is launched before major firepower is in place
Phoenix arose bleary-eyed at 10am on Friday and downed a Hell energy drink, just three hours after coming off duty from the night before. Standing outside a destroyed school, the 25-year-old explained that his mission has remained the same since March – when Ukrainian forces drove the Russians out of this village sandwiched between the southern cities of Mykolaiv and Kherson.
“We will liberate Kherson, that’s not an expectation, but a certainty,” said the soldier. “But we won’t make a counter-offensive until we have more artillery.”
For Ukrainian forces, Kherson holds a symbolic and strategic importance.
While Western allies and the Kyiv government are eager for the highlyanticipated counter-attack to begin, military leaders want to build up overwhelming forces and firepower before an advance.
“We need more artillery support and only after that can we advance,” Phoenix said.
It’s easy to see why. This southern farmland where Ukrainian forces halted the Russian march westwards is open for miles – a patchwork of featureless fields, hardly ideal for defence but no cakewalk to capture from reinforced positions either.
Like much of the frontline between Ukrainian and Russian forces, it has been months since either side made any significant gains here.
Ukraine initially held off the Russian advance in heavy fighting on the outskirts of Kherson. But outflanked and encircled by Russian troops, they were forced to break out, abandoning the city to consolidate their defences further west.
A port city of 250.000 inhabitants on the right bank of the lower Dnipro river, Kherson was the first major city to have fallen to Russian forces since the February invasion.
President Vladimir Putin’s troops appear more vulnerable here than on other fronts, with an estimated 20,000 soldiers in a pocket west of the river, reliant on three bridges for supplies.
Recapturing Kherson would prove to Ukrainians in other occupied cities that they can yet be liberated. And an advance here could also reassure Western allies, who may be tiring of costly support to a war that threatens to bog down into a grinding stalemate.
To make major successful advances, Ukrainian forces will need six new mechanised and tank brigades of about 4,000 men each, estimates Franzstefan Gady of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Launching an offensive without these could result in unsustainable losses, costing Ukraine some of its most experienced fighters; men like Psikh, another soldier in the unit, whose call sign means Crazy.
Even for an experienced warrior, the fighting in Kherson is particularly difficult. “It’s just fields,” he said.
In recent months a handful of longer range artillery rocket systems – the American Himars and their British equivalent the M270s – have changed the war, enabling Ukrainian forces to target Russian positions from afar without exposing their troops.
Now a new war is under way. “We’re bleeding their veins,” said Sergii, an anaesthesiologist serving with the Ukrainian military behind the Kherson frontline. Those veins are the supply lines that run through Crimea to the Russian front, over the three bridges across the Dnipro river.
Video shared online on Friday showed the bridge over the Dnipro at the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant heavily cratered and likely impassable to heavy traffic. But in Kherson the Antonovsky Bridge may be still passable to cars, despite repeated Ukrainian strikes.
The Russian soldiers have also updated their tactics, Phoenix said. “In the beginning they were attacking in waves, they’d try to win with superior numbers. Now they’re mostly defending their positions, if they want to attack they use artillery first and then advance in small groups.”
Ukraine’s allies continue to announce big new support packages – the US this week promising another $3billion (£2.5billion) and Germany announcing €500million (£425million) – but all these weapons will take months, if not years, to arrive on the front lines.
The next batch of new heavy weapons aren’t expected to arrive on the Kherson front for another six weeks, Psikh said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky now has a decision to make. Does he let a stalemate persist, at the risk of entrenching a politically unacceptable status quo, or does he chance major losses in the hopes of seizing the advantage?
“The Ukrainian armed forces are under political pressure to conduct a counter-offensive before Russian forces strengthen their defensive positions and before the winter,” said Mr Gady. “Ukraine could end up wasting a lot of resources for little gain. This could be dangerous for Ukrainian combat power in the medium term.”
‘We need more artillery support and only after that can we advance on the Russian positions’