In spite of a heroic counteroffensive by Kiev, Russian tanks, vehicles, and artillery are accumulating in southern Ukraine as Putin’s forces attempt to tighten their control over the area.
Russian forces drove north from the occupied peninsula during a deadly six-day fight to seize control of the Kherson region near Crimea on March 2.
However, Ukraine has put up a strong fight against the invaders in recent weeks, and Kyiv is now confident that it can recapture the area by September.
This morning’s daily intelligence bulletin from the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) stated: “Long convoys […] continue to move away from Ukraine’s Donbas region and are going southwest.”
According to the MoD, “Battalion tactical groups (BTG), which are made up of between 800 and 1,000 soldiers, have been sent to Crimea and will probably certainly be employed to reinforce Russian forces in the Kherson region.
In Ukraine’s southern areas, Ukrainian forces are increasingly concentrating their attacks on rail links, munitions storage facilities, and bridges.
“Russia’s war against Ukraine is set to enter a new phase, with the focus shifting to an approximately 350-kilometer front line running parallel to the Dnieper River from close to Zaporizhzhia to Kherson.”
In the meantime, video shared on Telegram claimed to show Ukrainian rockets striking a Russian armoured car, the kind that would presumably be in the “long convoys” that are rumoured to be travelling to Kherson.
According to Ukraine, there have been claims of horrendous Russian war crimes in Kherson “on a magnitude almost too sickening to imagine.”
Russians are allegedly ambushed, bombed, and the targets of sniper fire in Kherson, according to pro-democracy activists in the area. The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are able to cause significant harm thanks to shipments of Western weapons.
The M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), which the US provided and is capable of firing barrages of missiles from the back of an armoured lorry, is the weapon that the Russians are most afraid of.
These rocket launchers are practically unstoppable since they are both manoeuvrable and deadly accurate. They may destroy a column of tanks or an ammunition depot in a single strike.
The AFU was supposed to last a month on the last shipment of HIMARS.
But with terrible results, they set the whole thing ablaze in three days.
‘We can say that the Kherson region will surely be liberated by September, and all the occupiers’ schemes will fail,’ declared Serhii Khlan, the regional governor of Kherson, last week.
The bold prediction came a week after Ukraine apparently tried to block off Kherson from reinforcements by attacking two important bridges going there, and as footage showed destroyed Russian anti-air systems in the area.
The only regional city to fall to Putin’s forces during the five-month conflict is Kherson, which also serves as Russia’s sole enclave on the western bank of the Dnipro River, which runs through the heart of Ukraine.
Regaining control of it would provide a significant propaganda blow to Putin’s forces and potentially put a stop to their efforts to advance west along the Black Sea to the port of Odesa.
Generals from Russia have already stated that one of their war goals is to block off Ukraine from the Black Sea, denying Zelensky’s administration access to its most valuable trading routes.