When the Biden administration announced a new military aid package for Ukraine this week, the highlight was an additional delivery of long-range mobile rocket launchers capable of hitting targets deep behind enemy lines.
But there was also less high-tech military equipment on the list that could prove equally important to any effort to retake the southern city of Kherson: 18 boats.
Control of waterways could be crucial in an impending counter-offensive in the Kherson region, which is crossed by the Dnipro, a river that crosses the country in a giant S-bend from the border with Belarus to the Black Sea.
Ukrainian forces this week used long-range missiles to shell the Antonivsky Bridge, which crosses the river, seeking to prevent Moscow from resupplying its troops in the city of Kherson from its bases further south in the Crimea region. The strikes caused damage, according to a video released by a senior Ukrainian official, and although the bridge appeared to remain passable, the attack demonstrated that it is difficult to defend.
“Things can happen,” an adviser to the Ukrainian president, Anton Gerashchenko, said in a post on Twitter. He said the strikes were carried out by High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, weapons that were provided by the Biden administration and are included in the new aid package. A Ukrainian official from the Kherson regional administration, Yuri Sobolevsky, said on Friday that following the attack, Russian forces now plan to build a pontoon bridge across the river.
Almost all of the territory Russia has captured in Ukraine since February is east of the Dnieper, but Kherson, a port and shipbuilding center, is on the west bank, making it vulnerable. The city fell to Moscow in March, partly because, in an act seen by some Ukrainians as treason, local authorities failed to follow through on plans to blow up the bridge, allowing Russian soldiers to enter in the city.
“If the Ukrainians can damage it or shut it down, it will weaken the state of Russian defense, and Kherson will be increasingly difficult to supply,” said Ben Barry, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. , a research group. based in London.
“Supplies can be transported by helicopter or plane, but these are more vulnerable to Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles and cost a lot of fuel,” Barry said.
Ukraine’s biggest battles, such as the struggle for the capital, Kyiv, and the campaign in the eastern Donbass region, have been fought on land, but control over water remains a crucial theater of conflict. The Russian navy has dominated the Black Sea since 2014, threatening the city of Odessa and preventing Ukraine from exporting grain and other goods.
US-supplied missiles sank the pride of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, Moskva, in April, and they also helped Ukraine retake Snake Island off Odessa last month. Both acts rolled back Russia’s naval dominance.
The Biden administration announced last month that it would provide 18 patrol boats to help Ukraine protect its rivers and coastal waters. Mr Barry said these could also help facilitate river crossings by Ukrainian forces – a tricky maneuver. Russia suffered one of its most painful defeats in May when a battalion was decimated trying to cross a river in the Donbass region which is much narrower than the Dnipro.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an overnight address that the country had “significant potential for the advancement of our forces on the frontline”. He did not specify where those gains might come from, but neutralizing the Kherson Bridge appears to be a prerequisite in the south.