Ukraine Strikes Russian Fleet and Aims To Retake Key Peninsula

Ukrainian forces continue to catch disorganized and demoralized Russians off guard by using to surprise and stealth to strike at strategically significant targets which can open up new opportunities to regain territory. JL 

Jared Malsin and Bojan Pancevski report in the Wall Street Journal:

Ukraine’s military stepped up efforts to reclaim parts of the country’s south, striking Sevastopol and launching an operation to push Russian forces from a strategic peninsula on the Black Sea coast. Ukrainian forces have begun an assault on the Kinburn Spit. The Kinburn Peninsula is a strategic prize for Ukraine. The sliver of land lies at a key maritime choke point leading to the port cities of Mykolaiv and Kherson, at the mouth of the Southern Buh and the Dnipro. Reclaiming the peninsula could provide relief to hundreds of thousands of people living in the Mykolaiv region from constant Russian shelling. 

Ukraine’s military stepped up efforts to reclaim parts of the country’s south, attempting to strike Sevastopol on Tuesday and saying it was launching an operation to push Russian forces from a strategic peninsula on the Black Sea coast.

The operations come as Kyiv looks to open up its besieged ports and build on significant gains in the region.

Russian officials said that Ukrainian forces launched a drone attack on the key port city of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea, which hosts the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Five drones were shot down, the city’s governor, Mikhail Razvozhaev, said on his Telegram channel on Tuesday evening. The first two drones tried to attack the nearby Balaclava thermal power plant, but no damage was inflicted on any infrastructure, he said.

Maritime traffic in Sevastopol was temporarily suspended following the attack, local authorities told the Russian state-controlled Tass news agency.

 

Ukrainian forces have also begun an assault on the Kinburn Spit, a strip of land jutting into the sea south of Mykolaiv that has been occupied for months by Russian forces cutting off access to the port city.

“For now, this military operation is in silent mode,” said a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command on Ukrainian television late Monday. She didn’t say when the operation had started but said stormy weather provided an advantage for Ukrainian forces in the area.

The larger Kinburn Peninsula is a strategic prize for Ukraine. The sliver of land lies at a key maritime choke point leading to the port cities of Mykolaiv and Kherson, at the mouth of two large rivers, the Southern Buh and the Dnipro.

Russian forces have used the spit to launch missile, drone and artillery strikes that have hammered the city of Mykolaiv, which remains in Ukrainian control but has suffered under heavy Russian fire throughout the war.

Reclaiming the peninsula could also provide relief to hundreds of thousands of people living in the Mykolaiv region. The near-constant Russian shelling has damaged schools, hospitals, grain silos, port infrastructure and many civilian homes. 

The governor of the Mykolaiv region, Vitaliy Kim, said in a social-media post on Tuesday that the capture of three more settlements on the peninsula would put the entire region under Ukrainian control.

The new operation comes as Ukrainian forces attempt to expand on a sweeping offensive that has recaptured vast swaths of land previously occupied by Russia in southern Ukraine. Ukrainian forces earlier this month took back the city of Kherson, the only regional capital claimed by the Kremlin since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine began last February. 

Russian forces launched heavy shelling of Kherson on Monday, a senior Ukrainian official said, attacking at a moment when Ukrainian authorities were working to restore normal life to the city. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, called the shelling “systematic.”

“There is no military logic: they just want to take revenge on the locals. This is a huge war crime live,” Mr. Podolyak said in a tweet.

Four people were hospitalized, including one who died, as a result of Russian shelling in Kherson on Monday, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukraine’s deputy prime minister urged civilians from Kherson to spend the winter in other parts of Ukraine due to the “complex security situation” and infrastructure issues in the area. Iryna Vereshchuk said in a Facebook post late Monday that citizens from Kherson, especially the elderly, those with disabilities and families with children, would be offered free relocation to other regions of the country. 

Elsewhere in southeastern Ukraine, Russian shelling hit a school that was being used as a distribution point for humanitarian aid in the Zaporizhzhia region, the local governor said. The attack killed a social worker and injured two other people, said governor Oleksandr Starukh in a post on the messaging platform Telegram. 

The liberation of Kherson was one of the largest symbolic victories for Ukraine in the entire war, pushing Russian forces from an area that President Vladimir Putin had weeks earlier claimed as part of Russia. Ukrainian forces have also swept into a large area of northeastern Ukraine in a separate prong of the offensive in recent months.

Recapturing the Kinburn Spit would provide key military advantages for Ukraine, allowing its forces a freer hand to operate along the Black Sea coast as it seeks to push the Kremlin’s troops from the area, military analysts said.

“Control of the Kinburn Spit would allow Ukrainian forces to relieve Russian strikes on the Ukrainian-controlled Black Sea coast, increase naval activity in the area and conduct potential operations to cross to the left [east] bank in Kherson Oblast under significantly less Russian artillery fire compared to a crossing of the Dnipro River,” said the Institute for the Study of War in an operational analysis.

Ukraine has increasingly challenged Russia’s dominance over the Black Sea since the beginning of the war, sinking the flagship of Moscow’s fleet in the region and using drone strikes and antiship missiles to push other Russian ships away from the key southern port city of Odessa. Russia has also blamed Ukraine for a series of attacks on its forces in Crimea, as well as an explosion that partially destroyed a bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula to Russia. Ukraine’s recapture of Kherson also ended Russia’s hopes of launching a further assault along the Black Sea coast toward Odessa, military analysts say. 

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet remains a threat, with frigates, submarines and amphibious ships all at the Kremlin’s disposal. Russia has used some of the ships to launch Kalibr-class cruise missiles at targets on land in Ukraine, part of a recent wave of attacks on key infrastructure, especially the country’s electrical grid.

Reclaiming the Kinburn Spit could also provide Ukraine with an economic boost, making it more viable for Ukrainian authorities to reopen the port of Mykolaiv, which handled 35% of the country’s critical food exports last year. The city’s ports shipped 30 million tons of grain, metal ores and other goods in 2021, according to data from Ukraine’s ports administration.

Only three of Ukraine’s major Black Sea ports are operating, exporting grain and other food items from Odessa under an agreement with Russia, Turkey and the United Nations that opened a safe corridor for those shipments in August. Ukrainian officials pushed unsuccessfully to include the port of Mykolaiv in the agreement in recent months. Russian shelling of the city and control over the ports’ entry point at the Kinburn Spit also posed an obstacle to any of them reopening, Ukrainian officials said.

The agreement with Russia partially lifted a naval blockade imposed on Ukraine that had triggered a surge in global prices of wheat and corn. The deal remains uncertain, however, after Russia briefly suspended its participation in October, threatening to halt the shipping corridor. Moscow agreed to an extension of the deal last week.