Russia took the city of Kherson, in southern Ukraine, little more than a week after launching its invasion on 24 February. It was the first major city to fall to Vladimir Putin’s forces, and remains the only regional capital to have done so. With the failure of the Russian plan for a lightning victory increasingly evident, and humiliating, the city’s capture was important for Moscow for symbolic as well as strategic reasons. Many of its 280,000 inhabitants remained not only angry but defiant, mounting protests in its centre. But the gruelling impact of Russian occupation has taken its toll. The protests were suppressed by troops. The crackdown on dissent has been ruthless and thorough. A Russian curriculum has been imposed in schools.
So Monday’s declaration by a Ukrainian military official that a long-anticipated southern counterattack had begun was a striking moment six months into this war. Ukraine’s southern command declared that Russia had suffered heavy losses of personnel and equipment (while Russia’s defence ministry claimed that it had inflicted severe losses on the Ukrainians). Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, claimed that troops had broken through Russian defences in several areas near Kherson – yet was also keen to manage expectations, portraying a “slow operation to grind the enemy”.
