Reports: Ukrainian Marines Retreat From Dnipro Bridgehead, Long-Held Defensive Bastion Lost

Ukrainian Marines have evacuated a key bridgehead village on the left/south bank of the Dnipro River, in a tactical defeat for Kyiv’s campaign to liberate and hold ground in the strategically critical southern sector, Wednesday news reports said.

The village of Krynky, opposite the major city of Kherson, was first grabbed by Ukrainian amphibious troops in a dramatic river-crossing operation in mid-October 2023.

The now-ruined fishing and summer vacation community was evacuated over the past week, ending more than seven months of Ukrainian force presence there, the DeepState military information platform reported.

The Ukrainian troops used small boats to cross to the Kyiv-controlled right/north bank of Dnipro and reached friendly positions near the city of Kherson, other news reports said. Substantial Russian interference with the evacuation was not reported.

Krynky and the swampy, wetland terrain around it had been widely profiled in national media as the scene of months of bitter but successful defensive battles fought by elite Ukrainian Marines, backed by omnipresent crowd-sourced drones, against more numerous Russian forces deploying a massive firepower advantage.

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Ukraine army official statements on Tuesday made no direct reference to retreat from Krynky. However, a report by the state-run Suspilne Novyni confirmed the village had been abandoned “a few weeks ago.”

On Wednesday, a Ukrainian Army Chief of Staff (ACS) daily situation report stated Kyiv troops still were present and holding positions on the left bank of the Dnipro in Kozachi Laheri, a village adjacent to Krynky.

Russian forces attempted a single assault against Kozachi Laheri on Tuesday, which failed, that official statement said. The last time Ukraine’s military reported ground combat in Krynky was July 11.

Soldiers and volunteers describing combat conditions inside the village in recent months reported less than 200 fighters. Most members of Ukraine’s Marine Corps along with a small number of territorial defense unit volunteers, had been holding out in Krynky since March.

Embattled Ukrainian troops for months had only able to receive food and ammunition, and evacuate wounded, aboard small boats targeted by Russian strike drones. Kyiv’s abandonment of Krynky village marked a possible end to months of attempts by Ukrainian forces to hold liberated territory and expand it.

The Ukrainian military possesses tactical bridging equipment, among it NATO-standard assault bridges donated by Germany. In the more than six months since the capture of the Krynky toehold, top Ukrainian commanders never attempted to bridge the Dnipro River, a major water obstacle comparable to the Rhine. Any crossing attempt would have been destroyed by Russian Air Force bombers operating mostly freely in air space over the Kherson sector, military analysts say.

Powerful glide bombs launched by the Russian Air Force pounded  Marine positions with near-impunity for months, because Ukrainian air defenses in the sector are too thin and short-ranged to interfere with the long-range Russian air strikes against the bridgehead.

That Russian air bombardment and ground assaults against Ukrainian positions have left Kryky village, once a pleasantly green waterfront hamlet with some 200 individual family homes and cottages, almost totally flattened.

According to Russian battle reports, fighting was still in progress in the Dnipro River lowlands near Kherson. Most engagements were infantry skirmishes amidst the lower river’s labyrinth of low-lying islands and canals, but Russian air strikes were continuing, the pro-Russia Dva Majora milblogger reported on Wednesday.

Official, Kremlin-controlled information platforms in March declared the Dnipro River’s entire left/south bank cleared of Ukrainian forces, angering milbloggers who said it was fake news and that the Ukrainian Marines were still holding out there.