The Russians Are Fleeing Southern Ukraine. They Could Cause A Lot Of Damage On Their Way Out.

The Russian army is retreating from Kherson. And it’s poised to leave behind it a lot of destruction and dead bodies.

Kherson, a port at the mouth of the Dnipro River on the Black Sea, was one of Russia’s biggest prizes as its forces rolled into Ukraine in late February, widening a war that began eight years ago with Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

Disorganized Ukrainian forces gave up Kherson, with its strategic port and railyard and prewar population of 300,000, without much of a fight back in March. For the next seven months, Kherson anchored Russian positions on the southern front.

As summer turned to fall, liberating Kherson was a top priority for Kyiv. Holding on to the city was one of Moscow’s top priorities. In May, the Ukrainian army—recently rearmed with new American-made howitzers and rocket-launchers—began striking Russian supply lines around Kherson, and even holed the Antonovskiy Bridge, the city’s main span across the Dnipro.

The 49th Combined Arms Army and other Russian forces in Kherson Oblast frayed. The Kremlin shifted forces from the east to the south to bolster the 49th CAA, but that left gaps in Russian lines in the east—gaps the Ukrainian army exploited with a counteroffensive starting in early September.

Ukrainian troops in the south counterattacked at the same time. The southern counteroffensive faced more resistance than the eastern counteroffensive did, but it still made swift progress east of Kherson.

A regiment of Russian coastal troops shattered. A Russian mountain brigade retreated as a Ukrainian mountain brigade advanced. A Russian airborne division briefly held off a Ukrainian marine brigade as desperate Russians fled south toward Beryslav, where a dam across the Dnipro offers a durable escape route out of Kherson Oblast north of the river.

Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the recently appointed commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, on Tuesday told Russian media “a difficult situation has emerged” in Kherson.

The escape began two weeks ago and accelerated this week. “Russian forces continue to reinforce crossing points over the Dnipro River, and have completed a barge bridge alongside the damaged Antonovskiy Bridge in Kherson,” the U.K. Defense Ministry stated.

More and more Russian troops—and their civilian support personnel—crossed the Dnipro, sometimes while under Ukrainian bombardment. Russian occupation authorities even ordered civilians in Kherson to cross the Dnipro. It’s not clear many will obey.

As Ukrainian brigades and the wet Ukrainian winter approach, the Kremlin is prepared to give up Kherson. On its way out, it’s going to inflict as much pain as possible—on its own forces and the Ukrainians. There are reports the Russian army is forcing recent draftees, who nearly to a man are unfit and untrained, to fight a rearguard action in order to buy time for better troops to reach Beryslav.

At the same time, Russian occupation officials are opening the dam, sending more water downriver toward Kherson and the river delta adjacent to the city. The flooding could complicate Ukrainian operations.

There’s an apocalyptic option. Once they’ve brought across the dam all their best troops—and whatever loot they can grab—the Russians could blow it up. The dam, that is. The flood could inundate Kherson and even creep north toward the nearby free city of Mykolaiv, a major base of operations for Ukrainian forces in the south.

The clock is ticking. The weather is getting colder and wetter and the mud is getting deeper. Most units on both sides of the conflict aren’t ready to wage war in the mud. The Russian retreat, and the Ukrainian offensive, both are likely to slow in the coming weeks.

If the Russians are going to blow the dam, they’re probably going to do it soon. Ukrainian commanders know this, and they’re not without options to limit the damage. They could land special operations forces on the dam.

They could speed up the pace of their operations, aiming to liberate Beryslav and Kherson before the Russians do their worst. If the Ukrainians move faster, Russia’s retreat could turn into a rout. “Russian forces likely intend to continue that withdrawal over the next several weeks,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. stated Friday, “but may struggle to withdraw in good order if Ukrainian forces choose to attack.”