A small step across the Dnipro River, a giant leap for Ukraine’s counteroffensive?

As Kyiv prepares for a counteroffensive after a grinding winter, two recent events in southern Ukraine have piqued the interest of military observers and raised questions over whether the much-awaited Ukrainian counterattack is in fact already underway.    

Tokmak – a small town between Zaporizhzhia and Melitopol, occupied by the Russians – was hit by Ukrainian shells on Tuesday, April 25, the Russian news agency TASS has confirmed. 

A  day earlier, Ukrainian troops near Kherson also succeeded in crossing the Dnipro River, a natural line of defence for the Russian army, according to an update from the Institute for the Study of War.  

Heading for Crimea?    

The two operations may have happened 300 kilometres apart, but they “both suggest Ukrainian military activity in the Crimea direction”, said Sim Tack from Force Analysis, a company specialising in military analysis.   

Russian military bloggers on Telegram originally confirmed that Ukrainian soldiers had crossed the Dnipro River, according to the Institute for the Study of War. The operation is said to have happened near Oleshky, a town south of Kherson and the starting point of “a direct road towards Crimea”, explained Tack.  The road would be “the logical route to reach the peninsula, if they didn’t want to fight in the Tokmak region”, he said.

Tokmak also offers an alternative, if longer, route to the Russian–occupied south. It is “a strategic crossroads that goes down towards Melitopol and enables the cutting off of Russian forces in the Kherson region from their supply centre in Mariupol,” said Huseyn Aliyev, a specialist in the Ukraine-Russia conflict at the University of Glasgow.     

A counteroffensive that succeeds in regaining the axis between Tokmak and Melitopol would almost certainly ensure that the Kherson region falls into Ukrainian hands, facilitating an advance towards Crimea, Aliyev explained. 

Testing Russian defences  

The two operations observed so far, “do not represent, in themselves, a notable change,” said Aliyev. “It’s the start of the counteroffensive, but the operation is not quite happening yet,” maintained Tack.  

Ukrainian forces managed to cross the Dnipro River before at the same crossing point in November 2022, shortly after regaining the town of Kherson. The most recent crossing “is not a massive advance with all the material necessary to establish a bridgehead in the region. It’s small, highly mobile units that have crossed the river,” noted Tack. 

“It looks like reconnaissance operations to test Russian defences and potentially start bringing over munitions to build up stocks ahead of a possible larger operation,” said Jeff Hawn, a Russian military specialist and consultant for New Line Institute, a US geopolitical research centre.  

In other words, the activity could constitute “the first phase of the counteroffensive”, said Tack. 

The counteroffensive itself could not be achieved with a single strike: instead, Ukrainian forces would need to identify weaknesses in the Russian defence while trying to destroy logistical support lines.  

This could account for the bombing of Tokmak. The city is not only located at a strategic crossroads, it “also houses a Russian command center, equipment such as an ammunition depot and a center for troop redeployments”, said Tack.

A diversion?  

Kyiv has made it clear that it wants to regain the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.  

>> Read more: Ukraine unveils plan for recaptured Crimea – but West ‘reluctant’ to help

However, experts agree that it is too early to tell whether Ukrainian forces plan to launch a counteroffensive to advance into the southeastern territory, or in the north into Donbas.  

Operations that seem to point towards Crimea could be a ruse. “We can’t discount the possibility of a diversion,” said Hawn.    

It’s a tactic that Ukrainian forces have used before. Just ahead of the Autumn 2022 counteroffensive that saw Ukraine retake the town of Kharkiv, Ukrainian forces made conspicuous efforts to stage the appearance of an imminent attack further north on Kherson.  

Aliyev doubts that a large operation crossing the Dnipro River is likely. “Crossing a river is much riskier than taking the road through Zaporizhzhia,” he said. In addition, “On the other side of the Dnipro, there are marshes that make it practically impossible to unload the heavy vehicles necessary to break through enemy lines.”    

Targeting Donbas, and specifically the Luhansk region, instead of Crimea would avoid a river crossing.

However, this area also comes with difficulties. “It’s much less flat than the Kherson region with many more towns to recapture, which would make any advance much slower,” said Aliyev. 

International pressure    

Whatever the plan, time is of the essence. Ukrainians “are under international pressure to launch the counteroffensive,” said Tack. “It has become inevitable because Western countries have sent enormous amounts of military equipment and want to see proof that it was necessary,” Hawn added. 

The wider context could impact how operations are planned. “The pressure risks pushing Ukraine into launching an operation that provides a grand spectacle, rather than advancing slowly and steadily,” warned Aliyev

There is also pressure to regain as much ground as possible. “Ukrainians are going to be tempted to prioritise territorial gains over destroying enemy units, because a map showing clear Ukrainian advances goes over better in the international media than reports on this or that Russian brigade being killed,” said Haws.  “However, both are equally important.”  

This article was adapted from the original in French.