For months from late summer, Ukraine’s forces pursued a meticulous counteroffensive to retake the southern city of Kherson from occupying Russian troops — without having to fight street by street.
Commanded by General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the army’s aim was to deploy precision western artillery to cut Russia’s supply lines across the Dnipro River while minimising Ukrainian losses in the face of a larger Russian force. Surgical strikes targeted weapons depots, command posts and two bridges that link to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, to gradually isolate more than 20,000 Russian troops.