Russia’s strategic withdrawal from Kherson preparation for winter?

New Delhi: Russia on Wednesday announced that its forces in Kherson will withdraw to the eastern banks of river Dnieper, to a place that offers a more defensible line with the Dnieper between the Russian and Ukrainian troops on one side and a completely Russian-controlled region up to the already annexed Crimean Peninsula on the other.

Russia’s top military commander in Ukraine General Sergei Surovikin reported to Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu that, one, it was “impossible” to supply the city of Kherson, and second, “futile”.

Kherson is a province in southern Ukraine divided by the river Dnieper. Most of the province on the eastern bank, along with the capital — Kherson city – on the west bank was occupied by Russian forces moving upwards from the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, in the south, in the initial days the war that began on 24 February 2022.

General Sergei Surovikin said that 115,000 people had been relocated because their “lives are constantly in danger” and proposed a military retreat “in the near future” to the opposite bank of the Dnieper River from where Kherson lies.

Russia had, last month, ordered civilians to leave Kherson city for other Russian-occupied territories, which it also recently annexed, anticipating a Ukrainian attack on the city.

The Russian defence minister, in line with Surovikin’s assessment ordered to “start with the withdrawal of troops and take all measures to ensure the safe transfer of personnel, weapons and equipment across the Dnieper River.”

Preparations for winter

Ukrainian terrain has a large number of water bodies, rendering it hard for heavy mechanised movement. However, in the winters when most of these bodies freeze large-scale movements of heavy artillery become more feasible. This is when an offensive is most likely to succeed.

Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the last couple of months has considerably reduced the strength of Russian troops on the ground. Russia had recently called up a partial mobilisation of around 300,000 reservists. The Mobilisation has now been completed. 82,000 of these Reservists are already deployed in Ukraine, while the rest 218,000 are in training and expected to be deployed soon after a brief training period. These are expected to help Russian units on the ground to hold defence this winter against the Ukrainian offensive.

Taking the initiative

Additionally, the Russian Military starts a conscription cycle in Autumn, which begins this month. Though Russian law forbids the deployment of troops with less than four months of training, there are provisions that this law could be bypassed as Putin has already declared a state of Emergency of varying levels throughout the Russian Federation, which now technically includes the Ukrainian provinces of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk since they were annexed last month.

According to the Institute for the Study of War assessment, Russian force generation will take place in two phases. One of these would be in this winter with the reservists, which it expects to hold defence this winter against the Ukrainian offensive.

Meanwhile, the ISW, assessment says Russia banks upon winters to break the European support for Ukraine. It expects that Europe, which mostly depends on Russian gas for energy and to keep itself warm in the harsh European winters, to see a wave of mass unrest by the people left with nothing to help survive the winters. This will pressure European governments to stop supporting the Ukrainian war efforts.

After the winters, when Europe stops its supplies of arms to Ukraine, the second force generation will take place. This would be the trained Conscripts with at least six months of training.

The fresh troops along with the withdrawal of European support will make the Russian offensive next year far more probable to easily overwhelm Ukrainian forces.

However, the ISW assessment says that removed from the strategy the fresh Russian troops without proper training won’t add to the combat effectiveness of the units on the ground, which is what is expected of them.

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