After Kherson, Ukraine’s Military Ponders New Push South and East

One of the Ukrainian military’s long-term goals appears to be an offensive that cuts south to occupied Melitopol, said Michael Kofman, a Russian military analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, a Virginia-based research group. The Russian military has been preparing for a Ukrainian offensive in Zaporizhzhia since summer, Kofman said. The Ukrainians, however, carried out offensives in Kharkiv and Kherson, west of the Dnieper River. “Whether they can do this sometime later in the winter or next spring remains very much a question,” Kofman said.

Ukraine has sought to stabilize the line in the battered city of Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region, and a second set of forces is trying to push back the Russian military in the Luhansk region. The question is whether Ukrainian forces have the available troops and artillery ammunition to pull off a southern offensive in the coming months, especially after taking casualties fighting in Kherson.

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