SHEVCHENKOVE, Ukraine — A mounting Ukrainian counteroffensive in this southern Black Sea region is building up to a crucial battle that could shape the outcome of the entire war by the end of September.
That is why I was recently rattling down the road from Mykolaiv in an armored Ukrainian military van moving toward the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, as Ukrainian Major Andre (his nom de guerre) explained why the coming battle to retake the city will be critical.
If Ukraine can retake the Black Sea port of Kherson, the only major Ukrainian city that the Russians occupy, it would smash Russian ambitions to seize all of southern Ukraine, including the entire seacoast and the famed port city of Odesa. It would boost the Ukrainian military’s morale and its prospects for regaining more of Ukraine’s southern lands — while badly shaking up the Kremlin.
Perhaps most important, it would prove to the United States and its allies that Ukrainian forces can drive the Russians back — if only they are provided more of the long-range precision weapons that have already made such a difference to this counteroffensive.
So I was hoping to get some insight into Ukrainian military morale and readiness for the Battle of Kherson on this trip.
What I found was a huge boost in military morale compared with my last visit to Mykolaiv in mid-July, a shift fueled by the arrival of 16 HIMARS — highly mobile, long-range multiple-rocket systems provided by Washington. “HIMARS have really changed the situation,” Major Andre told me, as we sped along dirt roads through fields of harvested wheat. (He, like the other soldiers I spoke to, was limited to using only a military nickname or first name, since they were soldiers in active service during a time of war.)
The smell of wheat fields scorched by exploding shells permeated the air.
HIMARS have enabled Ukraine to take out Russian logistics bases in the east and south, as well as to close the vital Antonivsky Bridge over the Dnipro River, which Russian forces used to supply their troops in Kherson.
But to push the Russians back from the wider Kherson region, the major stressed, his army will need more HIMARS with munitions that can target longer ranges, plus air defense systems and planes.
We drove up to a system of bunkers a couple of kilometers behind the line of confrontation. A soldier identified only by his military nickname, “Satan” (bestowed on him after a tough battle), guided me through the underground tunnels. “Of course we can beat the Russians,” he told me as he showed me the troops’ kitchen and bunk room, disturbing a couple of groggy fellow soldiers. Then he stopped to stir a pot of borscht bubbling on a cook stove. He told me he is eager for the Battle of Kherson to begin and plans to marry his girlfriend “if I am not killed.”
“Satan,” who has been at war with Russians for 7½ years, almost since the start of their first invasion of Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2014, oozed disdain for his opponents and their methods. “They were burning their own soldiers,” he told me, referring to reports that the Russian military had set up mobile crematoria to lessen the number of casualties that would return home in body bags.
“The ‘Orcs’ were really active for the past two weeks,” he continued, using the popular Ukrainian slang for Russian soldiers that refers to the race of ugly monsters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s "The Lord of the Rings." “They were throwing cluster bombs into the fields, and causing casualties in [Shevchenkove] village, where people are very old and can’t leave.”
Russia’s accelerated and deliberate targeting of civilians has fed a seething anger among Ukrainian troops that also stokes morale for the coming fights.
Our van drove through the shattered town of Shevchenkove, once home to 7,000 people where barely 100 remain. Buildings not hit by shells were trashed by Russians. The windows of the school were all broken, and inside every room, furniture and papers were tossed into heaps.
“A lot of civilians died in this town,” Major Andre told me. He stopped to drop off some food for an older couple, Luba, 60, and Lonya, 62, who lost his left leg below the knee. The couple mainly live in their basement because of constant shelling. When I asked Luba why she stays, she smiled broadly, displaying a mouth full of gold fillings, and said: “This is my house, these are my soldiers. If they know I am not here, they have no reason to fight for us.”
Luba’s daughter finally fled the village after her house was destroyed by shells. Luba said her 12-year-old granddaughter’s hair had turned gray from fright.
We left their home in a rush after Major Andre called out: “Let’s go! Let’s go!” He was concerned we may have been spotted by Russian drones.
The major also displayed blistering scorn for the “cowardice” of Russian troops. We drove over grass and dirt roads to a spot where a long line of rusted Russian vehicles — troop carriers and ammunition trucks — lay abandoned, having been hit by Ukrainian fire in March. “They fled, and left their dead behind,” he told me, shaking his head in disgust at the behavior of the Russians.
He showed me a large area of disturbed earth where, he said, Ukrainian paratroopers “dug up 50 bodies of dead Russians, so we could exchange them for ours.”
This scorn for Russian troops convinces Ukrainian soldiers that their skills and motivation can offset Moscow’s dispatch of tens of thousands more troops and weaponry to the Kherson region.
“One Ukrainian soldier is equal to 10 Russian soldiers,” the major said firmly. He believes the Russians may flee Kherson, now that their supply lines have been cut off by HIMARS, rather than stand and fight. “They are in a panic, locals don’t support the occupation, and Russian fake news doesn’t help them.” (Of course, the Russians may choose to use Kherson’s remaining residents as hostages, making it more difficult for Ukraine to fire at the city.)
The major believes the Russians won’t be able to hold an undoubtedly rigged referendum in Kherson in September, intended to endorse the city’s annexation by the Russian Federation. However, Ukrainian officials have expressed hope of taking back the city before the fake vote.
Ukrainian resistance inside Kherson is well-organized, Major Andre said, even though the Russians are trying hard to crush it. “We constantly get information from people in Kherson. We know who is eating what, sleeping where,” he said, “and we are documenting rapes.”
The high military morale doesn’t mean, however, that there isn’t depression over casualties, and anger at Western aid that comes too little, and too late.
Yet this military thirst for justice opens the possibility that Ukraine can win the Battle of Kherson. All will depend on whether the West understands it must deliver the necessary HIMARS and other vital weapons, not in months or years, but in the coming crucial weeks.
