While the Donbas front continues to be the main focus of the direct military confrontation between the Russians and the Ukrainians, with occasional advances and setbacks that show that neither side is in a position to achieve a definitive victory in the short term, we are now witnessing the reactivation of another front called to gain weight immediately: Kherson Oblast.
Practically since the beginning of the invasion, this region, neighboring Crimea, has been in Russian hands. From their capital, which is an important port and shipbuilding center on the banks of the Dnieper River at the outlet to the Black Sea, the pro-Russian local authorities are trying to consolidate a political framework that even points to the holding of a referendum to give a facade of legality to its annexation plan to Russia. A plan that they have not yet been able to implement, as a clear sign of the rejection that the idea has aroused in a population that has not received in a friendly way those it describes as invaders.
In military terms, this local reaction forces Moscow to maintain a certain number of occupation units deployed there, which, therefore, cannot be used on other battlefronts. But it is that, in addition, now, with a Ukraine grown in its eagerness to regain control of all its territory, there are clear indications that the situation is evolving negatively for Russia. On the one hand, kyiv has just officially announced the start of a counteroffensive which, in a first phase, presumably aims to expel the invading troops to the eastern shore of the Dnieper. An action that shows the growing will and capacity of the Ukrainian forces, with the increasingly clear Western support in sophisticated weapons, of move from an obligatory defensive attitude to an offensive one. The first data from this offensive suggest that Russian troops are retreating in some parts of the region, without this meaning in any case a general withdrawal.
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But, simultaneously, actions such as the explosion of a car bomb in Melitopol, in the neighboring Zaporizhia oblast, which has only injured two people. At first it might seem that it is a punctual event without relevance; but it makes more sense to interpret it as the first signs of a armed resistance to the invader and occupier. Immediately Moscow and its local puppets in the city have described the act as a terrorist attack for which it blames kyiv, following a manual repeated so many times in so many other similar scenarios (Israel serves as an example). On the contrary, without official Ukrainian sources having yet taken a position on the matter, it is not too far-fetched to assume that this action, however tiny it may have been, points to a plan of resistance that seeks to complicate Russian management of the occupied territory.
Expanding the focus further, it is immediate to conclude that the war in Ukraine goes far beyond the head-on clash between regular forces and that, as so often happens when the weaker side tries to get rid of the more powerful, their greater knowledge of the terrain and the complicity of their own population and those who sympathize with their cause are equally important assets. And that includes from those who carry out sabotage in Russia itself, destroying logistics warehouses, or in Belarus, hindering rail traffic, to those who fuel guerrilla warfare in the occupied territory.
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.