It is a year now since Ukrainian forces liberated Kherson. I knew it before the war as a polyglot and bustling port city (if still determinedly Soviet in feel) sitting largely on the western (right) bank of the mighty Dnipro River.
In the first few days of the war, in February 2022, Kherson was seized by Russian forces. It was the largest and strategically most important Ukrainian city to come under Russian occupation. While a major administrative centre itself, Kherson also represented an important gateway for Russian forces in terms of their hoped-for later push towards the vital port city of Odesa, some 150km further to the west.
But the advance stalled and Russian forces had to relinquish control of Kherson some months later, in November 2022. By then, Ukrainian military pressure was making holding the city untenable. It made more operational sense for Russian forces to pull back across the Dnipro and to establish better defensive lines along the river’s eastern (left) bank.
