After months of fighting and a hasty Russian retreat, Ukraine’s armed forces liberated the southern city of Kherson last week, scoring a major strategic and symbolic victory.
Kherson was the first major city Russian forces captured following their February 24 invasion and its return to Ukrainian control appears to mark a major watershed in the nearly nine-month-old war.
In addition to facilitating a platform for additional Ukrainian gains in the east and south, Kherson also provides a bulwark against potential Russian advances westward along the Black Sea coast.
But with winter approaching, Moscow appears intent on imposing maximum pain on Ukrainains with a massive bombing campaign against energy infrastructure and other civilian targets. So what does the war look like after Kherson?
On The Power Vertical Podcast this week, host Brian Whitmore speaks to military analyst Michael Kofman to unpack it all.
SHOW NOTES
The audio clips in the beginning of the program and the second segment are from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech on November 14. The translations are as follows:
Opening audio clip:
“It is obvious to everyone what Ukraine is, what the presence of our flag is. When there is a Ukrainian flag, there is civilization, there is freedom. There is social security. There is infrastructure. There is security. There is someone to take care of people. There are all the things that disappear and that are destroyed when the occupier comes.”
Audio opening second segment:
“It is happiness for everyone when Russia is driven out. Happiness, which will also be in those cities and communities of ours, which are deprived of a normal life by Russia both after February 24 and in 2014. We will return everything. We will return to normal life. And we know that peace for Ukraine is getting closer. For our entire country.”
You can read Michael Kofman’s analysis of Russia’s war on Ukraine in War on the Rocks here.