By Constant Méheut
Ukrainian troops have lost a hard-won position on the eastern bank of the Dnieper River, near the southern city of Kherson, after months of bloody fighting to hold on to a piece of land in what some Ukrainian soldiers and military analysts have described as a futile operation.
The Ukrainian military said Wednesday night that fighting continued on the eastern bank but that most of the main positions in the village of Krynky, where its troops had gained a foothold, “were destroyed by intense, combined and prolonged enemy fire.” The statement came after several Ukrainian news media outlets reported that Ukrainian forces had withdrawn from the village, which now lies in ruins.
The operation to establish a bridgehead on the Russian-controlled eastern bank of the Dnieper had been controversial from the start. Launched last fall, it was seen as an attempt to open a new front in the south that would disrupt Moscow’s logistics and tie down its troops in the area. But military analysts warned that the operation, which consisted of dangerous river crossings, was vulnerable in its logistics and unlikely to lead to rapid breakthroughs.
Ukrainian gains were limited to small pieces of land near the river, of which Krynky was the most notable.
As fighting to secure the position dragged on for months, Ukrainian soldiers involved in the operation complained that it was brutal and senseless. Soldiers crossing the river on boats were easy targets for Russian drones and mortars. Once they landed on the eastern bank, they had nowhere to hide because the bombed-out terrain had been reduced to a mass of mud and flattened houses.
“From a military point of view, I find it difficult to find some grounds for this operation,” said Emil Kastehelmi, a military analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group. “Whatever the initial goals of the operation were, they have most likely not been met.”
The Dnieper River divides the two armies in the south. Ukraine has controlled the western bank since the fall of 2022, when a successful counteroffensive drove the Russians out of the city of Kherson and pushed them across the river.
Ukrainian assaults on the eastern bank began about a year later. They were initially shrouded in secrecy, with small groups of soldiers harassing Russian forces in night raids, arriving from small boats at various points along the meandering river.
Officials remained tight-lipped about the fierce fighting until last November, when they announced that their troops had seized a sliver of land on the Russian-controlled bank, including Krynky. One of the goals of the operation appeared to draw Russian troops to the area and prevent them from being dispatched to other parts of the front where Moscow was on the offensive, such as in the east.
Oleksandr Kovalenko, a Ukrainian military analyst, said that Russia had concentrated tens of thousands of troops in the area to repel Ukrainian attacks. “Let’s imagine that this resource of 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers appeared in the Belgorod region, supplementing the northern troop groups,” he said, referring to Russia’s recent offensive in northeastern Ukraine. “Would the Russians then have been able to capture Vovchansk and Lyptsi completely? Yes.”
Vovchansk and Lyptsi are two towns in the north where fierce fighting has raged but which Russia has been unable to capture.
But holding on to Krynky also cost Ukraine many lives. Ukrainian soldiers said they were stuck for days in muddy terrain with little to no cover from Russian artillery, drones and airstrikes.
An article published Wednesday by Slidstvo Info, an investigative Ukrainian news outlet, reported that at least 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed on the eastern bank or are missing. That figure could not be independently confirmed.
By winter, with casualties mounting and Ukraine failing to expand its presence on the eastern bank, Kastehelmi, of the Black Bird Group, said the operation had become “more politically motivated,” with the goal of showing that Ukraine could still be on the offensive, as doubts increased among Western allies that Ukraine could win the war.
Kastehelmi said Ukraine did not have the resources to sustain such an attritional fight for months. “It’s a fair question to ask if the operation should have been ended faster and if Ukrainian brigades could have been better used in other areas,” he said.
Comments