How did Ukrainian officials frame the attack in Kherson?
At a briefing reported on Monday afternoon, Nataliya Humenyuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern command, said an offensive in Kherson, the only regional capital Russia has been able to secure since the war began, was under way. Her comments came after video circulated that apparently showed a soldier from the Russian-run self-proclaimed republic of Donetsk saying Ukrainian forces had broken through.
The Guardian’s Isobel Koshiw in Kyiv reported comments echoing Humenyuk’s last night from Oleksiy Arestovych, a senior adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Zelenskiy himself did not refer to the attack specifically in his nightly address. But the Ukrainian president said: “The occupiers should know: we will oust them to the border. To our border, the line of which has not changed.”
Other Ukrainian officials echoed those claims. Sergiy Khlan, a local deputy and adviser to Kherson’s regional governor, said it was “the beginning of the end of the occupation of Kherson region” and “a prepared, well-balanced start of a counteroffensive”.
How do they say it has gone so far?
Arestovych said Ukrainian troops were attacking Russian defences along the frontline and claimed they had broken through in several places. He also said ferries on the west bank of the Dnieper River, which are being used to supply Russian forces in the territory, were being shelled.
The BBC reported officials in Kyiv claiming that US-supplied Himars rocket systems had been used to destroy three bridges across the Dnieper as well as temporary bridges created by Russian forces. The BBC also said a Ukrainian operational group in the region claimed a Russian-backed regiment had left its positions and Russian paratroopers had fled.
Ukrainian officials declined to give details of the attack, citing operational security. But their claims could not be independently corroborated. While witnesses reported blasts in the cities of Kherson and Nova Kakhovka, the extent and success of Ukrainian operations are yet to be confirmed.
The Financial Times reported remarks from John Kirby, a US national security spokesperson, who said Ukraine’s actions had “already had an impact on Russia’s military capabilities” because Moscow had been forced to divert resources to the region from the east of the country.
This at-a-glance piece gives a wider picture of the situation in Ukraine this morning, including news of a team of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors en route to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, where Kyiv claims Russian occupiers are violating nuclear safety protocols.
What does Russia say?
Russia’s state-owned news agency Ria cited the defence ministry in Moscow as acknowledging that Ukrainian troops attempted an offensive in the southern Mykolaiv and Kherson regions. A senior official in Nova Kakhovka told Ria that civilians had been ordered to take refuge in bomb shelters.
The Russian defence ministry said Ukrainian forces had sustained significant casualties and claimed the “enemy’s offensive attempt failed miserably”. The FT reported that Sergei Aksyonov, the Moscow-appointed governor of Crimea, said on Telegram that the claimed counterattack was “the latest fake [news] from Ukrainian propaganda” and said Ukraine’s forces were “taking extremely severe losses”.
Again, it is not yet possible to verify these claims, and Russia routinely inflates the scale of Ukrainian losses in its updates. Recently, western and Ukrainian intelligence have noted a buildup of Russian troops and equipment in the region, potentially suggesting Russia was preparing its own offensive.
What are the prospects of success?
Humenyuk told reporters that Russian forces were strong in the region – and that even though morale was low among their ranks, “it was too early to relax”. In comments on his Telegram account reported by the Guardian’s Samantha Lock on the live blog, Arestovych characterised the action as “a planned slow operation to grind the enemy” and said: “This process will not be very fast, but will end with the installation of the Ukrainian flag over all the settlements of Ukraine.”
Ukraine’s ability to conduct its claimed counteroffensive has been greatly enhanced by the provision of weapons by the west, and Russian positions in the region have been under artillery barrage for weeks and cut off from their supply lines.
But it is too early to say whether those successes will translate to victory on the ground. A US official quoted by the New York Times said the Pentagon “remained cautious about whether Ukraine’s current military capabilities were sufficient to make significant gains”.
Why is an attack in Kherson significant?
Kherson has huge symbolic and practical significance as the only regional capital to have been secured by the Russian invaders – and if Ukraine can entirely cut off enemy forces on the western bank of the Dnieper, they will have a realistic prospect of success.
That would disrupt Russian attempts to proceed with a sham referendum designed to give credibility to Moscow’s claims that residents of Kherson and other parts of southern Ukraine wish to be part of Russia. For more on how that prospect is viewed by citizens in Kherson, read this piece by Shaun Walker and Pjotr Sauer from earlier this month, in which one interviewee says: “No one thought about [a referendum] before the war. Now it will be a referendum at gunpoint.”
There has been a growing sense that if Kyiv is to retake the city, it must do so as a matter of urgency: changing weather – including rain that will make the countryside muddy and far harder for ground troops to traverse – in the autumn means there is a powerful incentive to launch a counteroffensive now. There are also fears European support could fade as the impact of high energy prices begins to take hold.
Success in any operation to take Kherson could break a long period of deadlock – and persuade western allies that it is worth continuing to provide the arms and funding that Ukraine needs. But if an attack fails, Ukrainian morale would be undermined, and Russia’s plans to bring the south of the country under its full control would be reinforced.
