Wendell Steavenson
In Kherson locals speak, with a biblical sense of time, of “before” and “after” the flood. When the Kakhovka dam exploded on June 6th, the area around the mouth of the Dnieper river near the city of Kherson, 58km (36 miles) downstream, was inundated. In some places the water rose six metres high, sweeping away houses and causing toxic oil leaks. “The landscape has changed,” a fisherman told me. “Where there were docks, there are now beaches. Where we used to catch fish in the reeds, there are piles of sand.”The front line runs down the river. It’s a “no-man’s-land, the Berlin Wall”, one soldier said. Russian and Ukrainian reconnaissance teams had been playing a game of cat and mouse among the dozens of islands in this area ever since Ukraine retook Kherson in November 2022. Control of the islands could help the Ukrainians establish footholds on the Russian-controlled east bank, threatening Crimea and forcing the Russians to reinforce the sector with troops from elsewhere along the front. The marshy terrain presents a formidable obstacle before the Ukrainian fighters even reach the Russian defences.
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