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In Ukraine news: Russia to withdraw from city of Kherson
As said in the article, this seems like big news, since Kherson was the only "big city" Russia has conquered in this period of war. Even the pro-Russian sources I follow on Twitter aren't trying to spin this ("Feint! Planned withdrawal! Actually good for Russia!") any more.
Of course this means that the new defensive line is harder to crack, but really, at some point, you'd imagine sheer morale questions would make it hard for Russians to proceed, at least. Where will the Ukrainians push next?
Kherson, because bar any un-announced agreement between the Russians and Ukrains over the terms of withdrawal, this will be a fighting retreat. It remains in the Ukrainian interest to force the Russians to retreat under fire rather than in relatively good order. Some of the main crossings are within 10km from being in 'normal' artillery range, which would greatly increase the pain to the Russian retreat.
But for the rest of this winter? I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it's much lower tempo/scale meant to make the Russian conscripts miserable rather than make a major breakthrough. Winter is well and here, and while it's not been the worst winter, the Ukrainians have been having as much trouble as anyone else in the relatively favorable southern terrain. There's also plenty of media of the Ukrainians having shot through their artillery barrels from over-use, they have indeed taken significant attrition in the units that were committed to Kherson that will need to be reorganized/reset/retrained, and so on. Plus, it's November. I wouldn't say it will be a quiet winter, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Ukrainians take an operational pause of about a month just to reset from Kherson, and then they'll face the decision of starting something in the middle of winter before Christmas, and of course the potential season of mud.
Given the timelines, and the ongoing western training/equipping pipelines, I wouldn't be surprised for a major offensive after the season of mud (which is not the same across the country, and would support an earlier offensive in the south than the north).
More interesting to me is the Russian side of this.
For one, Putin actually capitulated to his leadership advocating the retreat. This was probably the influence of General Sergei Surovikin, the former commander of Russian forces in Syria and who had (or retained) a good reputation with Putin and was brought in to take over last month. Surovikin succeeding where the Defense Ministry had failed for some time, but also overcoming the hardliners who had insisted escalation (which had included conscription) were needed to avoid the appearance of future defeats, is revealing.
For a second, just as the Ukrainians have reason for an overall pause, so do the Russians. The Russians have put conscripts around the fronts already, but many have also been put into training regimines as the Russians try to re-build their training organization infrastructure. A few months of relative lull can get the Russians from the embarassment of totally untrained conscripts to a maybe minimally trained, and have basic defenses prepared through the winter, etc.
Third and finally, an operational lull is likely the last/best chance Putin will have to force an armistice/truce/peace and turn this into a frozen conflict along post-Kherson lines. The Russians have been targetting Ukrainian energy infrastructure and are likely to continue, which hasn't yet caused a grid collapse but eventually would/could if they keep throwing enough drones at it. While the European energy card has failed to meet the pre-war expectations of what a cutoff would entail, being a major pain instead of a catastrophe, breaking the Ukrainian energy grid and leveraging that with other options might be seen as a way to compel the unicorn of European forcing a pro-Russia settlement at a point when Russia probably has the most relevant territory it has going forward.
This is a window, however, and I admit to being bear-ish on its prospects, because as the Europeans bring more energy and energy import infrastructure online in the coming months, the Russian leverage drops.
It currently doesn't seem to be a fighting retreat.
Indeed. It appears the fighting retreat was what was happening the last few weeks. And egg on my face for not raising that possibility either, despite some (admittedly contradictory) reports of partial withdrawals. It remains to be see how much was/was not withdrawn- there seems to be indications that some conscripts brought in to buffer the more experienced elements were left behind and told to basically do whatever, with many of them donning civilians and trying to go to ground in the city, but the consolidation of the west bank seems to be going on quickly. It remains to be seen how much was left behind, but... well, we shall see.
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