A Strategic Strip Of Sand. Rumors Of Ukrainian Raids. As Russian Forces Retreat, Keep An Eye On The Kinburn Spit.

The Kinburn Spit is a narrow finger of sand and scrub, barely three miles long, that juts from the wider Kinburn Peninsula into the Black Sea at the mouth of the Dnipro River south of Kherson. It and the adjacent peninsula also are the last parts of Ukraine’s Mykolaiv Oblast that remain under Russian occupation.

Don’t expect that to last. The Kremlin on Wednesday ordered its battered forces on the right bank of the Dnipro to retreat to the river’s opposite bank.

The order came six months after Ukrainian brigades, re-armed with European howitzers and American rocket-launchers, began bombarding Russian supply lines in the south—and two months after those same brigades launched a counteroffensive aimed at liberating Mykolaiv and Kherson Oblasts.

The Ukrainians have the Kinburn Spit in their sights. They’ve got the troops, the equipment … and a plan.

Russian troops seized the Kinburn Spit in mid-June as Russian advances in the south—having already overwhelmed Kherson city—ran into stiff resistance a few miles south of Mykolaiv city. Capturing the spit would turn out to be one of the Russian army’s last victories in the south. The four-month Ukrainian counterlogistics campaign that preceded Ukraine’s southern counteroffensive already was underway.

Kinburn matters. Russian control of the sandy strip “will allow them to exert further control of the Black Sea coast,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. explained in June. For the Ukrainians, Kinburn is a back door—a way to get forces onto the left bank of the Dnipro without crossing the river, likely while under fire.

As far back as April, U.K. intelligence agents were advising their government to support Ukrainian forces in any future attempt to “conduct beach reconnaissance” on the Kinburn Spit. The recon could “Identify good landing locations for a larger assault force for a future counterattack,” the agents explained in a presentation that later leaked to the press.

It’s possible Ukrainian special operations forces riding in rigid-hull inflatable boats began reconnoitering the spit as early as September. In October, video circulated online reportedly depicting the Ukrainian navy’s last remaining big ship, the 240-foot amphibious vessel Yuri Olefirenko, apparently firing rockets at Russian forces on or near the spit.

The Ukrainian military’s southern command on Saturday announced its intention to liberate Kinburn. Within a day, there were videos online possibly depicting Ukrainian commandos riding toward the spit in their small boats.

If and when the Ukrainians land in force on Kinburn, the odds should favor them. “With the recent advances in Kherson, this is well within massed artillery range,” explained Mike Martin, a fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College in London. And to be clear, he means Ukrainian artillery.

“The Russians are finding it very hard to hold” in Kherson and Mykolaiv, Martin added. The Kilburn Spit could be the next piece of Ukraine they give up.