The announcement of the Kherson Retreat may have signaled one of the gloomiest days of the Russian Federation since 1991.
Leaving the right bank of the Dnieper to set up a defense line on the left bank may spell out total military sense. General Armageddon himself, since his first day on the job, had hinted this might have been inevitable.
As it stands in the chessboard, Kherson is in the "wrong" side of the Dnieper. All residents of Kherson Oblast - 115,000 people in total - who wanted to be relocated to safer latitudes have been evacuated from the right bank.
General Armageddon knew that was inevitable for several reasons:
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no mobilization after the initial SMO plans hit the dust;
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destruction of strategic bridges across the Dnieper - complete with a three-month methodical Ukrainian pounding of bridges, ferries, pontoons and piers;
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no second bridgehead to the north of Kherson or to the west (towards Odessa or Nikolaev) to conduct an offensive.
And then, the most important reason:
- massive weaponization coupled with NATO de facto running the war translated into enormous Western superiority in reconnaissance, communications and command and control.
In the end, the Kherson Retreat may be a relatively minor tactical loss. Yet politically, it's an unmitigated disaster, a devastating embarrassment.
Kherson is a Russian city. Russians have lost - even if temporarily - the capital of a brand new territory attached to the Federation. Russian public opinion will have tremendous problems absorbing the news.
The list of negatives is considerable.
Kiev forces secure their flank and may free up forces to go against Donbass. Weaponizing by the collective West gets a major boost. HIMARS can now potentially strike targets in Crimea.
The optics are horrendous.
Russia's image across the Global South is severely tarnished; after all, this move amounts to abandoning Russian territory - while serial Ukrainian war crimes instantly disappear from the major "narrative".
At a minimum, the Russians a long time ago should have reinforced their major strategic advantage bridgehead on the west side of the Dnieper so that it could hold - short of a widely forecasted Kakhovka Dam flood. And yet the Russians also ignored the dam bombing threat for months. That spells out terrible planning.
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