Battle of Kherson

The battle of Kherson began on 24 February 2022, as part of the southern Ukraine campaign of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The city of Kherson was captured by Russian forces on 1 March 2022. Russia then began a military occupation of the area.

The fall of Kherson was a major defeat for Ukraine; Kherson was the first major city, and the only regional capital, to be captured by Russian forces during the 2022 invasion. Russian forces also took the city with little resistance, which has been attributed to treachery on the part of several local officials.

Russian invasion
In the early hours of 24 February, a large Russian force, estimated by Ukrainian military expert Serhii Hrabskyi to be 35,000 men strong, invaded Kherson Oblast from Crimea. Fighting was soon reported in Chonhar, on the border with Crimea, and residents of the town of Chaplynka in southern Kherson Oblast observed columns of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and multiple rocket launchers moving in the direction of Nova Kakhovka.

Dmytro Ishchenko, the commander of the Kherson Oblast territorial defense brigade, was informed at approximately 5:00a.m. that an invasion was underway, and began preparations for Kherson's defense. Kherson International Airport was bombarded shortly afterwards. Hundreds of Kherson residents soon flocked to the city's military headquarters to receive weapons and volunteer for the defense of Kherson. Ultimately, about 500 civilians would enlist in the 192nd Kherson Battalion of the Territorial Defense Forces.

At approximately 11:00a.m., a Russian column reached nearby Nova Kakhovka from Crimea, hanging the Russian flag over the city's hydroelectric power plant. Around the same time, Russian forces disembarked from helicopters and took up positions around the Antonivka Road Bridge and the village of Antonivka. With both of the area's crossings of the Dnieper River under Russian control, Ukraine's 59th Brigade of about 1,200 men was effectively surrounded outside of Oleshky.

Battle for the Antonivka Road Bridge
By mid-day, most civilian volunteers from Kherson had been deployed to the 192nd Battalion's base in Naddniprianske, 8 km outside of the city. Ka-52 helicopters fired on battalion members as they retrieved weapons from the battalion's warehouses near Antonivka and Sadove, Kherson Raion, Kherson Oblast, and an Mi-8 transport helicopter was observed preparing to land paratroopers in the area of the Antonivka Railway Bridge.

At 3:00p.m., a company of territorial defense fighters began moving towards the road bridge to force the Russian paratroopers out and open a path for the encircled 59th Brigade to withdraw over the Dnieper. Of the 78 men in the company, one was killed and three others wounded, including the company's commander, Oleksandr Berezovsky, by a Russian air raid as they approached the bridge. Two more companies of territorial defense advanced toward the bridge, and despite additional airstrikes, the Ukrainians took control of the bridge and managed to cover the retreat of the 59th Brigade, which withdrew to the city of Mykolaiv. The territorial defense units returned to Naddniprianske sometime between 8:00p.m. and midnight. Governor of Mykolaiv Oblast Vitalii Kim credited the counterattack on the bridge with preventing a Russian attack on Mykolaiv.

Around 4:00a.m. on 25 February, part of the 192nd Battalion was sent to prevent a bridge over the Inhulets River at Darivka from being captured by Russian paratroopers. They observed a Russian column on the opposite site of the Inhulets, and withdrew shortly thereafter, having received information that a column of Russian tanks was crossing the Antonivka Road Bridge.

In the morning, a CNN team visited the Antonivka Road Bridge in the aftermath of the battle and found disabled military vehicles, dead soldiers, and craters caused by shelling. The bridge was still manned by Ukrainian soldiers, one of whom told the reporters that the nearest Russian positions were about 3 km away. The Russians were stationed at the southern side of the bridge, near Oleshky, but were said to not be disturbing civilians, who freely drove from one side to the other in personal vehicles. Shelling of Ukrainian positions and residential areas continued in the afternoon, and by dusk, governor of Kherson Oblast Hennadiy Lahuta announced that the Ukrainian military had lost control of the bridge and the city's defenses had fallen.

Ukrainian counterattack
On the morning of 26 February, mayor Ihor Kolykhaiev announced that Kherson remained under Ukrainian control. According to a Tweet by The Kyiv Independent, Russian forces pulled back from Kherson after a Ukrainian air strike on Russian armored vehicles. A Ukrainian official, Anton Herashchenko, published footage of a destroyed column of Russian military vehicles near Radensk and Oleshky, just south of Kherson. Ukrainian air defense shot down a Russian Su-25 jet and Mi-24 helicopter near the city on the 26th as well.

On the morning of 27 February, the Russian Ministry of Defence stated that Russian forces had encircled Kherson and, according to Ukrainian officials, had captured a part of the city, including the airport. Later in the morning, the Ukrainian Air Force allegedly conducted a successful drone strike against Russian forces in the town of Chornobaivka, just to the north of Kherson.

Russian encirclement and capture of Kherson
By 28 February, the Institute for the Study of War assessed that Russian troops had likely completely encircled Kherson. In the early morning of 1 March, Ukrainian officials stated that Russian forces had launched a renewed assault on Kherson and were advancing from Kherson International Airport to the highway between Kherson and Mykolaiv. While conducting heavy shelling, Russian forces surrounded the city, reached the highway, and advanced to the village of Komyshany before establishing a checkpoint. Russian forces entered Kherson later in the day.



At around 10:00a.m., more than 40 Ukrainian soldiers of the 194th Bilozerka Battalion of the 124th Territorial Defense Brigade went to Lilac Park, Kherson, in the city's Korabelnyi district, near the Kherson Refinery. The Ukrainian military expected only light Russian infantry to be present in Lilac Park. However, when they arrived, the Russian military was fully present, with tanks and armored vehicles. At around 11:00a.m., a 20–30 minute engagement took place between Russian and Ukrainian soldiers at the park. The engagement left at least 24 Ukrainian soldiers dead, with the Russian military "finishing off" any wounded Ukrainian soldiers found after the battle. Only one Russian soldier was killed during the engagement. Some of the Ukrainian soldiers who survived the battle retreated to the oil refinery and later abandoned that position.

On the evening of 1 March, Russian forces occupied the port of Kherson. Pavel Filatyev, a former member of Russia's 56th Guards Air Assault Regiment who wrote a book on his experience in the war, compared the scene to paintings of barbarians sacking Rome, as "savage" Russian soldiers looted valuable goods and ate all the food they could find.

In the early morning of 2 March, Mayor Kolykhaiev reported that Russian forces had captured the city's railway station and the Kherson River Port. Later in the morning, Russian forces were seen at Freedom Square, Kherson, in central Kherson, where the Kherson Regional Administration building is located. Later in the day, a group of about ten Russian officers, including a commander, entered the city council building, where Kolykhaiev was. That evening, Kolykhaiev announced that he had surrendered the city and that the Russian commander intended to set up a military administration. Kolykhaiev acknowledged the Ukrainian military was no longer present in Kherson, and another official stated that the Russian military was in all parts of the city.

Aftermath
After capturing Kherson, Russia began a military occupation of the city and surrounding region. They used force to suppress protests by the local population. On 22 March, a Ukrainian official warned that Kherson was facing a "humanitarian catastrophe" as the city was running out of food and medical supplies. It accused Russia of blocking the evacuation of civilians to Ukraine-controlled territory. The Russian forces were reported to have committed human rights violations against the populace, including torture and arbitrary detentions.

On 23 March, Ukrainian forces launched counterattacks against Russian forces in Kherson Oblast. A senior US defense official claimed that the Russian forces no longer had full control of Kherson as the Ukrainians fought "fiercely" to recover the city. CNN, however, reported that the situation in the city remained unchanged, citing residents confirming Kherson was under full Russian control. Ukrainians in Kherson also "questioned the Pentagon's assessment, saying that the city remained in Russian hands".

Casualties and war crimes
According to Mayor Kolykhaiev, speaking immediately after the fall of the city, the fighting led to the deaths of as many as 300 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, and severe destruction of the city's infrastructure. He said that bodies were being buried in mass graves, and that many remains were unrecognizable. Kolykhaiev claimed that schools and tower blocks had been damaged by the fighting, and that residential buildings had been fired upon by Russian forces. Kolykhaiev claimed that on 1 March, Russian soldiers shot citizens who were armed with Molotov cocktails.

On 25 February, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, Iryna Venediktova, claimed that Russian forces murdered a journalist and an ambulance driver near Kherson. Venediktova stated that Ukrainian law enforcement had opened criminal proceedings into the shootings. Ukrainian officials alleged that beginning on 27 February, Russian forces began moving civilians from nearby villages towards Kherson, attempting to use them as human shields.

Lahuta reported that the Russian military had taken "heavy losses" during combat for the Antonivskyi Road Bridge over the Dnieper River on 25 February. In May 2022, Valentyna Romanova, a writer for the European Consortium for Political Research, published that Ukraine sustained 300 military casualties during the battle, with the entire Ukrainian defense force at Kherson having been injured or killed during the fighting.

Treachery and collaboration
In November 2023, Gilbert W. Merkx, a professor at Duke University, along with the United States' Marine Corps University, published an article in the Journal of Advanced Military Studies placed on the Project Muse database, that stated Russia had captured Kherson with "little resistance". Merkx stated that Russia planned and attempted to execute an amphibious landing assault on the "Kherson-Mykolaiv-Odesa axis", but was stopped by the Ukrainian coastal defenses in the early stages of the invasion.

There were questions concerning how Kherson was captured so easily. Orysia Lutsevych, a member of the Chatham House, a British-based think tank stated that "Russia had its agents infiltrated into the Ukrainian security forces". On 1 April 2022, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the head of the Security Service of Ukraine's Kherson regional branch and a general as traitors. Zelenskyy described their actions as that of "anti-heroes", and that he "...had trouble determining where their Fatherland is". An aide to a general was arrested for handing over maps of minefields to Russian forces and helping coordinate Russian airstrikes in the region.

Significance
In October 2022, the Spanish newspaper El País described the fall of Kherson as "Ukraine's worst defeat in the war". Kherson's symbolic significance was as the first major city and the only oblast capital captured by Russian forces during the invasion. Strategically, Kherson has been described as "a gateway to Crimea", and as a key to control of the Dnieper river. On 2 March, just after Kherson was captured, there was a measured spike in bots on Twitter (now X) with pro-Russian hashtags, including #IStandWithPutin. On 4 March, there was a measured spike in bots promoting the pro-Ukrainian hashtag #IStandWithUkraine, which the Australian University of Adelaide believed to have been Ukrainian authorities countering Russian propaganda.