Day 537: Aug 14

Today there are a lot of updates from the Kherson region.

Here, after Ukrainians finally broke Russian resistance in front of Oleshky and established a powerful bridgehead, Ukrainians shifted their focus to the northern part of the region. The main goal of Ukrainian forces is to drive Russians away from the eastern bank of the river, gain as many footholds as possible, and set conditions for a much more comprehensive attack.

The first thing Ukrainians did was undermine Russian defensive capabilities on this section of the front line. Geolocated footage shows that there were huge explosions in Nova Kahovka. Later, Ukrainian military officials confirmed that Ukrainians had successfully destroyed a Russian command post. And this is extremely important because Russians are controlling from here the whole region.

Next, Ukrainians started targeting Russian reserves. By destroying Russian reserves, Ukrainians were making sure that Russians would not be able to react to unexpected developments and block Ukrainian advancement. Recently, Ukrainian reconnaissance drone operators detected that Russians were yet again using columns to move through the region. Ukrainians once again exploited this opportunity, tracked them down, and destroyed Russian reinforcements.

The next logical step became destroying Russian ammunition depots. The first target of the Ukrainian strike became an ammunition depot near Krynky. But the biggest strikes happened in Oleshky. Here Ukrainians destroyed 2 ammunition depots in just one strike. The explosion was much more powerful, indicating that Russians indeed lost tons of ammunition and equipment.

After that, Ukrainians evaluated the situation and identified a weak spot in the Russian defense, which turned out to be near Kozachi Laheri. Geolocated footage shows that Ukrainians tracked down and destroyed Russian reconnaissance teams that were operating in the region, significantly diminishing understanding of the situation in this sector. Ukrainian sources reported that Russians lost up to 17 troops killed in action, including a high-ranking officer.

In preparation for the ground operations, Ukrainians conducted intense artillery preparation on the Russian positions in and around the village, undermining the Russian defense. Finally, Ukrainians also unleashed their kamikaze drones to target whoever was still left in the trenches on the zero line.

Later at night, Ukrainians conducted an amphibious operation and assaulted Russian positions on the eastern bank of the river. Some sources reported that Ukrainians used 7 boats and 50 troops in total. This was enough to breach the primary line of defense and advance by up to 1 km within hours. Everything happened so quickly that the battalion commander did not understand where his forces disappeared. He went to check on them but got right into the Ukrainian trap. As it turned out, Ukrainians effectively jammed communication and swiftly captured not only Russian positions but also a lot of Russian soldiers, including the commander of the battalion.