Ukraine's counteroffensive begins in earnest

One guess who blew up the Kakhovka dam

Photo illustration: Salon/Getty Images

There’s no place where you can dig a foxhole on a boat.  That’s why river crossings, or crossing any body of water for that matter, are the most hated and dangerous of military operations.  So let’s get this straight, right off the bat:  A country contemplating launching an offensive – that would be Ukraine -- especially against an enemy force larger than its own, does not choose to immediately make things more difficult for itself.

It's not the only reason, but it’s the main reason why Ukraine did not blow the Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River.  They would be idiots to destroy the hydroelectric plant at the dam that supplies electricity to much of the Kherson region. That was of course done by Russia, which has made it part of their overall strategy of the war to launch a campaign against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure since its beginning. 

Ukraine holds the west bank of the Dnipro, and Russia holds the east bank.  Does anyone actually think Ukraine blew that dam, turning a river into a mile-wide lake the Ukrainian army would have to cross in order to attack Russian positions on the east bank?  The first thing an army calculates when planning for a river crossing is how much time its soldiers will spend in boats on the water, where they are most vulnerable to enemy fire.  Alternatively, it was to the advantage of Russia to widen the water gap Ukrainian forces must cross before they reach the east bank of the Dnipro to engage the enemy and seek cover and concealment from enemy fire.

The destruction of the dam, and the flooding of Kherson and the entire Dnipro delta, drowned out the idea that Ukraine might launch at least one part of its offensive in that region.  There had been speculation for months about where Ukraine would begin its counteroffensive.  The front line in the war is more than 600 miles long, reaching from the Russian border in the north to the Sea of Azov and the Crimean Peninsula in the south, so Ukraine has had a lot of spots to consider.

Would they choose to focus the attack on Bakhmut and humiliate Putin and his attack dog Prigozhin, who recently announced they had won the year-long battle for Bakhmut?  Ukraine could shove Russia’s egotism down their throats:  You spent 100,000 troops to take a town of 70,000 in the middle of Eastern Ukraine nowhere?  Watch this!

This is my bi-weekly Saturday column in Salon. You can read the rest of it at the Salon website:

Ukraine's counteroffensive begins in earnest