The ninth month of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started as a slow period,
with little land exchanging hands, mostly limited to the southern front.
This appeared to be a disappointment for Ukraine,
after September saw Ukraine recapture 1.76% of its territory
and October saw another 0.42%.
But in fact, Ukraine was slowly trapping Russia into an untenable
position in the key strategic city of Kherson.
And indeed, on November 9, Russia announced its
withdrawal. Ukraine had won it back without a bloody showdown.
But that’s the end of a longer three-act story about how Ukraine accomplished its goal.
Let’s go through the full strategy and talk about what might happen next.
Act One: The Kherson Feint
Oddly, this story starts with Kherson being a distraction for another attack.
Like the end of October, most of the summer was a slow period for the war,
with the lines of control staying mostly constant,
and Ukraine focusing on training a functional army to eventually unleash on Russia.
By September, though, Ukraine had found its opening.
We’ve discussed this strategy at length before, but the short version is this.
Kherson sits on the northern side of the Dnipro River.
Russia found itself there in part because of early dreams of capturing
Odesa,
and in part because Moscow wanted to deny Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea via the Dnipro.
But it was a decidedly inconvenient place for Russia to stay.
To service the Russian occupiers, there is only one very helpful road bridge next to the city,
one bridge somewhat close to the city but starting to get out there for rail only,
and one very suboptimal hybrid of a dam, hydroelectric power plant,
and road bridge very far away from the actual heart of the city.
Ukraine spent the summer bombarding the bridges with HIMARS rockets,
making them impassible for military vehicles.
This put Russia in a bind. There were two plausible places Ukraine could aim
its counterattack: at Kherson or at a set of targets all the way up north.
The busted bridges meant that Russia could not rapidly redeploy forces between the two areas.
Combined with having too few soldiers more generally,
Russia had to pick one, and presumably it would choose whichever one it believed was
more valuable, knowing that Ukraine would adjust their attack plans accordingly.
And so they injected the additional forces in Kherson.
Up north, Ukraine took what Russia was willing to sacrifice,
leading to the aforementioned large September gains.
But this is still a story about Kherson, which takes us to Act Two: Logistics Sabotage
Although initially a feint,
Kyiv intended to have the attacks on Kherson set up a longer-term strategy.
With the easier targets taken in the North, Ukraine refocused its efforts to the south.
Part of this was to continue its artillery barrages.
The other part was traditional advances on the ground. Ukraine
focused its efforts to the north of the city.
Combined, this forced Russia to keep resupplying the region, lest Ukraine retake it in a walk over.
The Russian efforts succeeded in slowing Ukraine’s advances.
Most of October’s paltry gains came from this area,
though the pace had slowed to a crawl by the end of the month.
Come early November, the map was basically frozen.
But two Ukrainian actions elsewhere created a headache
for Russia and ultimately killed any long-term plans to stay in Kherson.
Focusing in on the region, Russia had two options for resupply:
via Crimean in the south or along Russia’s precious land bridge captured in the war.
Ukraine’s counter-play on the first option was
the well-known attack on the Crimean Bridge on October 8.
Technically, we still don’t know who is responsible.
But Ukraine tweeted out how it was a “sick burn”
and released this postage stamp to commemorate the event, so we can draw our own conclusions.
Prior to the war, the bridge was the
only practical way for Russia to make deliveries to Crimea.
After the war began, it turned into a critical resupply route for the southern front.
But the October 8 blast destroyed the roadway for one direction of car travel,
damaged the other, and also caused problems for the parallel rail bridge.
It is unclear exactly how badly this has affected Russia’s military,
but it certainly has not helped.[]
More subtly, the September counteroffensive up north targeted rail hubs, hindering Russia’s
ability to supply its freshly annexed regions. Since then, Ukraine has focused
steady artillery barrages on Russia’s rail lines running up and down the land bridge.
The strategy here is the same: hitting rail targets anywhere
has spillover effects everywhere along the front lines by slowing movement to a crawl.
And all of that forced Russia into a dilemma
Put yourself in Moscow’s shoes.
Ukraine is pressuring you with soldiers on the ground and with missiles from the sky.
Only a couple of months ago, you placed your most
experienced soldiers—and therefore most valuable soldiers—into Kherson city.
You don’t have a good ability to resupply the soldiers because of the attacks on the rail lines.
And once you get the supplies near the city,
you don’t have an easy ability to go across the river into the city. But the kicker
is that you also don’t have the ability to go across the river and easily leave the city.
That last part is crucial because it sets up Russia for a potentially catastrophic loss.
If Ukraine’s actions continued for an extended period,
the valuable soldiers would eventually find themselves completely outgunned.
Yes, the longer they stayed, the longer Russia would keep control over the territory.
But the long-term risk—especially with bridges not facilitating a rapid retreat—was
that Russia would either lose them in battle or as Ukrainian prisoners of war.
That is why, after Putin ordered the mobilization of 300,000 soldiers in September, Russia appeared
to be cycling out its seasoned troops for the fresh faces by the middle of October.
This was a pure stalling tactic to keep Ukraine occupied in Kherson,
both figuratively and literally, and prevent the Ukrainian army from rapidly recapturing the city,
while still guaranteeing that the top troops would live to fight another day.
However, even that was untenable, leading Russia to announce the complete withdrawal
from the northern side of the Dnipro on November 9.
To cover all of our bases here, Ukraine has expressed some concern that Russia is trying
to set a trap by falsely signaling a retreat, and secretly leaving irregular forces behind.
When Ukraine reenters, they would then reveal themselves and cause massive casualties.
Just something to keep an eye on.
With Ukraine retaking Kherson City, the question turns to what will happen next in the war.
We start with the materiel gains … or lack thereof.
Undoubtedly, the Kherson withdrawal is a major victory for Ukraine
And incidentally Zelensky’s 24 inch pythons.
However, it is not the same type of success as what went on up north in September.
Back then, the withdrawal was chaotic.
Russia left tons of materiel behind that Ukraine was all to happy to integrate into its arsenal.
With Kherson, Russia planned the withdrawal for a long time,
meaning they are not going to be leaving behind the same level of equipment as before.
In other words, Ukraine is going to have to do its Christmas shopping elsewhere.
Maybe try the United States, especially with
Democrats doing surprisingly well in the midterm elections?
Kyiv will also have to make a decision about how much economic pain it wants to inflict on Russia.
This is a tricky strategic question for Zelensky.
The dam upstream on the Dnipro sufficiently
raises the river’s level to reroute water into the North Crimean Canal.
The canal was a major source of tension before the
war because it previously supplied the vast majority of fresh water to Crimea.
But Ukraine created a makeshift dam after Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014.
When the war started in February 2022, one of Russia’s first actions was to destroy it.
And part of Russia’s rationale for crossing the Dnipro and heading into Kherson in the first
place was to guarantee that Ukraine would not just shut it off at some other point.
Now Ukraine has that option again. Will they do it?
One risk here is that Russia can essentially hold Dnipro dam hostage.
We have discussed before about how Russia was floating the idea
that Ukraine was going to conduct a false-flag operation on the dam,
which led Western intelligence to suspect
that Russia was setting up a false-false flag operation.
The reason Ukraine would not want to destroy the dam is because the flood
plain down river would get soaked and suffer untold economic harm.
Russia’s disincentive is that it needs elevated water lines to keep the canal flowing.
But if Ukraine is already denying Russia that, then Moscow might not see any downside.
There is the slight issue that the flood plain
is more concentrated on southern side of the Dnipro than the north.
But this is occupied Ukrainian territory, so it is not as if Russia cares much about that.
Then again, Russia is supposed to care because the signing seen here
technically makes the area a full-fledged part of the federation by Russian law.
But the flood will also help cover the Russian exodus, so there’s bonus there too.
What’s next for the actual military part of the war?
The obvious next point of attack for Ukraine is somewhere along the middle of the land bridge.
That would cut off the southern tier from reliable resupply,
and put the vast majority of the pressure on a single
bridge with questionable structural integrity.
From there, Ukraine could apply steady pressure to the rest of
Kherson oblast until all Russian forces have left.
Regardless of that next step, it is likely we are going to see a slowdown.
Rainy weather will inhibit tank movements,
and more of the Russian mobilized forces are going to begin appearing on the front lines.
Combine those together, and Ukraine will need to adapt the strategies it has been pursuing—
at least until winter freezes the ground and allows tanks to move more rapidly.
Or, if that never happens because of a warm weather, then until next summer.
In the meantime, it will be interesting to see if the
sides become more inclined to pursue negotiations.
We have previously discussed how Ukrainian momentum was a major bargaining friction.
But even if that gets resolved, there is still
uncertainty and
Putin’s domestic political biases that may continue to make serious negotiations untenable.
Where do you think the war is headed next? Let me know in the comments.
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