Kherson: Ukraine stepping up counter offensive to retake city – sources
Kherson: Ukraine stepping up counter offensive to retake city – sources
By Leo Sands
BBC News
- Published31 minutes ago
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Ukraine’s campaign to retake the occupied Kherson region is “gathering pace,” Western military sources say.
A key bridge into the city of Kherson was forced to shut after being damaged by long-range Ukrainian rockets originally supplied by the US.
It means thousands of Russian troops are now in danger of being cut off from the rest of the occupied territory.
Strategically located west of the Dnipro River, the city was the first in the war to fall to Moscow’s forces.
Ukrainian forces fired at Kherson’s Antonivskiy Bridge using a Himars artillery rocket system on Tuesday, which according to Western military sources left the crossing “completely unusable.”
Only a pockmarked wreck remains of the half-mile long bridge, one of two key routes spanning the Dnipro River which have both now been hit.
Moscow depended on the crossings to resupply their troops stationed west of the river, and are now at risk of becoming isolated from the rest of Russia’s occupying forces.
Military sources described Kherson as “politically the nearest Russia has to a jewel in the crown of its occupation” – and its loss, they say, “would severely undermine Russia’s attempts to paint the occupation as a success”.
Moscow is now “moving the maximum number of troops in the Kherson direction,” said Oleksiy Danilov, who is secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council, on Wednesday evening.
The BBC has not been able to independently verify this claim.
