Putin’s army retreats from around Kherson
Abandonment of west bank of Dnipro River could give control of key city to Ukrainian forces
RUSSIA’S army has started to abandon the west bank of the Dnipro River, a retreat that could hand control of the city of Kherson to Ukrainian forces.
Ukraine’s military said Russian forces were using barges to move equipment across the Dnipro and had deployed 2,000 soldiers to cover their retreat.
“The enemy is conducting defensive actions, trying to hold the occupied lines, and is [transferring] equipment, weapons and even units from the right bank of the Dnipro to the left,” it said.
This assessment was backed up by the US-based Institute for the Study of War and the British Ministry of Defence.
They had been predicting that Russia would start to withdraw across the river as it had become too difficult to resupply its forces on the west bank. Sergei Surovikin, a Russian commander and general, had also said that the situation was “already difficult”.
The MoD said that Ukrainian artillery has hit bridges across the Dnipro, damaging supply lines and forcing Russian forces into a precarious retreat using bridges made out of barges.
“Although the use of heavy barge bridges was almost certainly included in Soviet-era planning for operations in Europe, it is likely this is the first time the Russian military have needed to use this type of bridge for decades,” it said.
Kherson is a priority target for the Ukrainian military. The most significant city captured by Russian forces in the war, the Kremlin had wanted to turn it into an example of life under Russian control. Instead, the economy collapsed and the security forces used brutal tactics to suppress dissent.
Control of Kherson is also strategically important and will let the Ukrainian army push on to occupied Crimea.
“Kherson is a key to the entire southern region, which would allow Ukraine to target key supply routes for the Russian forces,” said Oleh Zhdanov, a Ukrainian military analyst. According to Russia Watcher, a daily tracking survey of Russian public opinion, more than two thirds think controlling the southern city is important for the success of what Moscow calls its “special military operation”.
Ukrainian forces have already pushed Russian forces back from around Kharkiv this summer and from outside Kyiv in March.
The pro-Kremlin administration in Kherson city has ordered the evacuation of the civilian population by ferries across the Dnipro River but Ukrainian officials have said they are being used as human shields. Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, has also said that Russian forces may blow up a dam about 35 miles upstream from Kherson to flood the city as a false flag attack.
“If Russian terrorists blow up this dam, more than 80 settlements, including Kherson, will be in the zone of rapid flooding,” he said.
Also in the Kherson region, reports said that a Ukrainian missile had killed 10 members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard who had been training Russian soldiers on how to use Iranian-made drones.