After success in Kherson, Ukrainian forces look to take advantage of new opportunities.
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Russia’s loss of the city of Kherson has reshaped the wider battlefield, experts said, giving Ukraine opportunities to expand its campaign to win back territory in the south while it forces Moscow to recalibrate its own approach after a stinging loss.
The decision by the Kremlin to withdraw last week from Kherson, the only provincial capital it held west of the Dnipro River, has given Ukraine control of the river’s western bank — and a foothold for striking targets further east into Russian-held territory.
Ukraine now has the opportunity to move forward advanced artillery systems supplied by Washington and other countries, which would bring new targets into range. Those weapons systems — including the U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS — were crucial to its advance in Kherson, enabling the country to pinpoint Russia’s military infrastructure from miles away.
Since entering the city over the weekend, the Ukrainian military has sought to target Moscow’s forces as they tried to regroup on the east side of the river, where Russia “continues to equip defensive lines,” according to an update from Ukraine’s general staff on Monday. The Ukrainian Air Force has launched strikes across the river, and the country’s southern military command said on Monday that it had fired on 33 Russian positions in the previous 24 hours.
On Sunday, the southern command said that it had used a high-precision missile to strike a building where Russian soldiers were staying in the riverfront village of Dnipryany, about 30 miles northeast of Kherson. The military said it observed “two trucks of dead invaders” being transported to a small town, Tavriysk, a few miles up the river.
It was not possible to verify the report independently, but residents in the area confirmed an increase in Ukrainian strikes and Russian activity on the river’s eastern shores.
The recapture of Kherson “will expand the area in the south that systems like HIMARS can reach for shaping and strike activities in support of future offensives,” Mick Ryan, a military expert, wrote on Twitter.
In time, Ukraine’s control of the western bank could also allow its forces to cross the river and potentially advance on the city of Melitopol.
Serhiy Lyshenko, a senior Ukrainian official in Zaporizhzhia, another southern region that straddles the Dnipro, said that Russia had increased its troop presence east of the river, including in Enerhodar, a city that houses many workers from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant that has been occupied by Russian forces since March.
But he claimed that the troops appeared demoralized. “They are mentally ready to retreat,” he told a Ukrainian television station.
Ukraine’s success in Kherson follows an advance in the northeast in September that has added pressure on Russian forces in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, whose capture has been a key focus of President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion. Serhiy Haidai, the exiled Ukrainian governor of Luhansk, said that Ukraine had retaken a dozen towns and villages in recent days, but that progress was slow in a region that Moscow overran in the initial phase of its invasion in February.
“They are advancing with difficulty and have to fight for every meter of Luhansk region,” he said on the Telegram messaging app. “The Russians had time to prepare and deploy a large number of conscripts.”
— Marc Santora and Matthew Mpoke Bigg
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