Thread by @TheStudyofWar

#Ukraine has won an important victory in the campaign that liberated western #Kherson.🧵

#Putin had been determined to hold this key terrain, possession of which would have allowed him to renew his invasion of unoccupied Ukraine from positions on the right bank of the #Dnipro.

https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1591922706588508160

2/ The importance of the Russian lodgement on the right bank of the #Dnipro River for renewing future Russian offensive operations was likely more important in #Putin‘s calculations than the symbolic value of retaining the only oblast capital his forces had seized since February.

3/ #Putin had committed substantial Russian forces to the defense of western #Kherson, including many of the remaining elite airborne units available to the Russian military. He also committed reinforcements generated by the partial mobilization of reservists ordered on Sept. 21.

3/ Those forces had dug in & fought hard to hold their ground in #Kherson, taking many losses. #Ukraine’s success despite this Russian determination and allocation of scarce elite units is in many respects even more impressive than its victory in Kharkiv Oblast in mid-September.

4/ #Ukraine’s success resulted in large part from the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ (UAF’s) innovative use of the US-provided #HIMARS precision rocket system to disrupt Russian supply lines. isw.pub/UkrWar111322

5/ The #HIMARS munitions the US has given #Ukraine are not suitable for destroying bridges—their warheads are too small and are not optimized for such strikes.

6/ The UAF developed a tactic to overcome that limitation by conducting multiple precision strikes across the key #Antonivskiy Bridge and the road that ran atop the Kakhovka Dam to break the roadways in a line across them, rendering them unusable without actually destroying them.

7/ The UAF continued to strike the bridges as the Russians sought to repair them, targeting the repair equipment as well as the roadways until the Russians finally gave up.

8/ The Russians attempted to construct a pontoon bridge under the Antonivskiy Bridge as a mitigation, but the UAF attacked that effort as well, causing the Russians to abandon it.

9/ The Russians were left at the end with barges ferrying supplies, equipment, and reinforcements from the east to the west bank.

10/ The UAF attacked the barges and landing areas as well, but the ferry system was in any case insufficient to supply the 20,000-some Russian mechanized troops trying to hold their lodgment on the western bank of the river. isw.pub/UkrWar111322