Kherson withdrawal is not the end of the war in Ukraine
People hug upon the arrival of the first train from the capital Kyiv on Saturday, after the Russian troops withdrew from the city of Kherson. Picture: AP/Sam Mednick
In September 1812, Napoleon’s Grand Armée, then the largest ever in history, defeated the Imperial Russian Army at Borodino, and advanced towards Russia’s largest city, Moscow. The Russian commander, General Mikhail Kutuzov, took the fateful decision not to defend the city. Kutuzov’s wise decision ultimately lead to victory over the French.
It is immortalised in Tchaikovsky’s famous 1812 Overture, often performed by orchestras using real artillery fire and simulated Moscow victory bells.
Today, throughout Russia, the recently appointed Russian commander in Ukraine, General Sergey Surovikin, is being hailed in national media as the new Kutuzov, by deciding to withdraw Russian forces from Kherson City, and other parts of Kherson Oblast (region) on the right (west) Bank of the Dnieper River.
Of course, the loss of Kherson City is a significant defeat for the Russians, but the execution of the apparently successful withdrawal operation has demonstrated the Russian Army in Ukraine is far from being a "spent force".
During the withdrawal, the Russian ‘scorched Earth’ policy of wrecking Kherson’s infrastructure (electricity, water, gas etc,) continued. On Saturday last, Russian missiles destroyed a fuel depot in Kherson.
The current situation, without power, is so bad for the remaining population of 70,000, that the Ukrainian authorities have decided to evacuate as many civilians as possible.
The sudden withdrawal of Russian forces from Kherson took most commentators by surprise. There was no final assault by the Ukrainians to push the Russians out. There were no verified reports of bloody hand-to-hand street combat.
It is worth looking at how this came about, before analysing the implications of the Russian withdrawal. On November 11, in a staged national TV debate, the Russians announced they were "redeploying" all their forces in the Kherson Oblast that were on the west bank of the Dnieper River, to the east bank.
The early winter rains had already started to turn the Kherson Oblast into a muddy quagmire, just as the Ukrainian Army was closing in on the Russian occupied city of Kherson. Kherson City, about the size of Cork, is located entirely on the west bank of the Dnieper River.
It is now clear that many of the 30,000 remaining Russian troops were exfiltrated under cover of the pre-announced civilian evacuation to the east bank.
Observers assumed the military trucks in the civilian convoys were just carrying civilians. They were, in fact, carrying soldiers. The bulk of the withdrawal was already over before the official announcement of the military "redeployment".
During this civilian evacuation, the Russians reportedly took items from museums and removed the body of that great icon of Russian history, Prince Grigory Potemkin, from St Catherine’s Church in Kherson and brought it to Moscow. Potemkin was Catherine the Great’s lover and chief adviser and died in Kherson in 1791.
The decision to withdraw the Russian troops from the west bank was taken for military reasons. The main problem was difficulty in keeping these soldiers supplied during the coming winter, as most bridges across the river were destroyed or damaged.
However, without a withdrawal, there was a real danger of the remaining Russian soldiers being captured by the Ukrainian advance.
Moreover, these remaining soldiers, many elite troops, were freed up to reinforce their units fighting further east in the Donbas. Moreover, the east bank is far more defendable than the west bank, with shorter and more varied supply lines.
The situation in Kherson City cannot be regarded in isolation from the situation at Nova Kakhova, 70km upstream, the site of a 3.2km wide dam and hydroelectric station. The dam, with Ukrainians at the northern end and Russians at the southern end, has a road on top of the wall which is partially damaged.
The town of Nova Kakhova is on the southern side of the river. Its Russian administration has started to evacuate civilian collaborators and their families. The hospital was closed last week, and its equipment moved to Russian-occupied Crimea.
Two weeks ago, President Zelenskyy claimed the Russians had laid mines on the dam and threatened to destroy it. This claim was denied by the Russians. Zelenskyy said if the dam was destroyed it would be a major environment disaster for Ukraine and that Kherson City itself would be flooded.
Some experts have pointed out that the resultant release of water could also destroy the North Crimean Canal, which provides 85% to 90% of Crimea’s water supply.
When the Russians invaded in 2014, the Ukrainians retaliated by blocking the flow of water from the Dnieper River into the Canal. The Russians had to dig deep wells and resort to desalinisation to provide minimum water for the estimated Crimean population of 2m people.
With the invasion of February this year, the Russians captured Nova Kakhova and unblocked the water from the Dnieper River to resume the flow into the canal. The possible recapture of Nova Kakhova by the Ukrainians could result in the Ukrainians blocking the water flowing again, as they did in 2014.
However, the current consensus among defence analysts is that the Ukrainians do not have the necessary river bridging capability to carry out this operation.
Nevertheless, If the Ukrainians tried to capture the Nova Kakhova station area, the Russians, if they were losing, could well blow up the dam. There are unconfirmed reports an explosion damaged the sluice gates at the northern end of the dam, just after the Russians crossed over to the south side.
Within the past few days, Ukrainian forces attacked a small Russian outpost on Kinburn’s Spit, a narrow extension of the Kinburn Peninsula in the Dnieper River Delta, 30km south-west of Kherson.
From the Spit the Russians had a clear line of fire on ships leaving the Dnieper River and entering the Black Sea. The western end of the Kinburn peninsula is in Mykolaiv Oblast, and if the Russians can be driven back, the Ukrainians could resume grain shipments from Mykolaiv port itself, as they are doing presently from Odesa.
The raid seems to have been carried out by a special boat unit, supported by artillery and rocket fire. If they could ultimately seize the entire Kinburn Peninsula, and advance eastwards, the Ukrainians could outflank the Russian east Dnieper defence line.
The road network is, however, poor, and the land marshy, but it is a possibility that cannot be ruled out. Significantly, the Ukrainian Southern Command have imposed a news blackout on operations in the area.
A breakthrough by the Ukrainians to the east bank of the Dnieper, either south of Nova Kakhova or onto the Kinburn Peninsula, would open a real possibility of Ukraine advancing rapidly towards Crimea.
With the withdrawal from Kherson City, Putin has, for now, to abandon his objective of capturing Odesa and linking up with the Russian forces in Transnistria (Eastern Moldova).
While Putin will politically survive withdrawing from Kherson City, the loss of Crimea could lead to his downfall.
The withdrawal from Kherson is not the end of the war in Ukraine, but it could well mark the beginning of the end.
- Dorcha Lee is a defence analyst
