(Bloomberg) -- Ukrainian forces withdrew from a strategic position south of the Dnipro River that they held for months, upending military aims to press ahead against Russian forces with a counteroffensive toward the Crimean peninsula.
Kyiv’s troops retreated from the village of Krynky on the left bank of the Dnipro in the southern Kherson region, the DeepState map service said in statement on Telegram Thursday. The service, which is maintained in cooperation with Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, said military engagements continued on nearby islands.
Ukrainian forces maintain fighting on the Dnipro’s left bank around Krynky, military spokesman Dmytro Lyhovyi said in a televised statement. He called the battlefield situation “complicated” because the settlement, some 38 kilometers (24 miles) west of Kherson, had been destroyed.
Ukrainian forces, which had seized back the city of Kherson after Russian forces withdrew in 2022, launched an effort late last year to secure a bridgehead south of the river. But those positions became more difficult to defend as Russian forces advanced in the east and north, particularly with a spring offensive north of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s No. 2 city.
The position was a potential springboard for a push further south, which could open a way to cut off Russian-held Crimea from mainland. Russia falsely claimed to have seized Krynky in February.
The swift advance of Russian troops in the early days of the large-scale invasion left vast swathes of southern Ukraine in the Kremlin’s hands. After seizing back a swathe of the Kherson region north of the Dnipro, Kyiv’s forces have struggled to press ahead further.
The area is far from where the most intense fighting has taken place this year, after Russian forces seized the eastern city of Avdiivka in February and made marginal gains afterward.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy this month said his military is better positioned in terms of manpower than it was a few months ago, but lamented the slow delivery of Western military equipment.
“It’s not a deadlock, it’s a problematic situation,” Zelenskiy told Bloomberg on July 3. “A deadlock means there’s no way out. But a problem can be solved if one has the will and has the tools. We do have the will, and the tools – they haven’t arrived yet.”
(Updates with military comment, background from third paragraph.)
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