On February 23, 2022, the day before the invasion into the Kherson region, Russians at their checkpoints suddenly stopped letting people into Crimea and back without any explanation. Earlier, Ukrainian marines noticed that the enemy was demining the territory they controlled in front of their checkpoint.
That same day, February 23, the command of Ukrainian troops in the Kherson region received information that the enemy might provoke an incident: they themselves would shell the “Titan” chemical plant located on the territory they controlled, to blame Ukraine for it. This case could be used as an analog of the Gleiwitz incident in 1939, when Hitler found a pretext to start a war against Poland.
On February 24, around 4 a.m., Ukrainian military personnel recorded more than thirty military aircraft taking off in Crimea. At first, they circled over the peninsula, obviously forming a battle order. After that, the planes dispersed over the Azov and Black Seas and began a massive missile launch.
The first missile strike hit the locations of Ukrainian units, command points, launch positions, and air defense control points, including the Melitopol airport. Almost all military objects in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions were targeted. At 4:30 a.m., Russian occupiers shelled Chernobaevka Airport in Kherson with “Kalibr” missiles. But by that time, Ukrainian helicopters had already been relocated elsewhere.
Around the same time, Ukrainian command received information from the commander of the 137th battalion, Colonel Rymarenko. He reported that the Russians began an artillery barrage, shelling the forward positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces at the Kalanchak and Chongar checkpoints.
The failure of the defense in the south of Ukraine had catastrophic consequences. Despite the fact that the small number of Ukrainian troops on the border with Crimea resisted fiercely, the Russians managed to break through the defense without much effort, enter the operational space, and by 10 a.m., reach the city of Nova Kakhovka. There, they captured the dam of the Kakhovka HPP and the system of facilities of the North Crimean Canal, through which water from the Dnieper is supplied to Crimea.
That same day, February 24, Russian troops reached Kherson. Approximately at 11 a.m., the Russian airborne troops, having landed from helicopters, took positions near the Antonivskiy Bridge. They failed to secure their positions, as they did not control the western part of the bridge in Kherson, and from the east, Ukrainian units were breaking through to the bridge, not wanting to be surrounded on the left bank of the Dnieper.
Around 8 p.m., on February 24, a tank group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces destroyed Russian paratroopers near the Antonivskiy Bridge and took a defensive position. After that, a column of Ukrainian troops almost an hour crossed the bridge from the left to the right bank of the Dnieper.
At midnight from February 24 to February 25, the Russians conducted an air raid on the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces near the Antonivskiy Bridge, after which they began an assault. The Ukrainians retreated into Kherson.
In the morning of February 25, information appeared that the Russian army had crossed the Dnieper through the dam in Nova Kakhovka and was moving towards Kherson by land from the northeast, in the rear of the Ukrainian defense. The Ukrainian Armed Forces had to retreat to Chernobaevka, and then towards Mykolaiv.
The occupiers did not rush to enter Kherson, preferring to encircle the city and advance towards Mykolaiv. The regional center was completely captured on March 1. There was no organized defense of Kherson, except for a spontaneous battle by volunteers in Buzkovy Park, on Naftovykiv Street. A small group of several dozen local men, who had joined the territorial defense a few days earlier, tried to stop the Russian column. Since they had only light weapons (rifles, a few assault rifles, and Molotov cocktails), this attempt was doomed. About 30 territorial defense fighters died in the park that day.
It should be noted that on February 24-25, Ukrainian troops quite successfully carried out airstrikes on columns of Russian troops in the Kherson region. Videos published online show more than ten units of military equipment with the letter Z destroyed on the road between the villages of Radensk and Oleshky. Another column was destroyed near the village of Veliki Kopani. There was also a battle on one of the streets of the town of Oleshky.
The strategic plan of the Russians was to quickly advance to the border with Moldova. Then the Ukrainian troops in the Odesa region would be cut off from the main forces in the center of the country. If this had happened, Ukraine would have lost all of its Black Sea coast. The rapid advance of Russian troops faltered near Mykolaiv — the next regional center after Kherson.
As recalled by General of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Dmytro Marchenko, when he urgently arrived in Mykolaiv on February 25, the city was engulfed in panic. On one of the streets in the city center, he even saw a man removing the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag from a house. When Marchenko, stepping out of the car, asked why he was doing this, the man replied: “They’ve already taken Kherson, they will be here tomorrow!”
The occupiers advanced with two groups. About 2000 units of equipment, including tanks and armored vehicles, moved from Kherson towards Mykolaiv. The second group: another 1200–1300 units of equipment, began a detour to the north towards Moldova.
The chaos that reigned in the first days of the war is best illustrated by a meeting of the military in Mykolaiv. When Marchenko, who was sent from Kyiv to organize the city’s defense, asked one of the commanders about his combat task, he replied: “Circular defense of my military unit.” Shocked, the general asked again: “And who will defend the city?”
Mykolaiv was saved from occupation by a miracle. Marchenko managed to quickly build fortifications on the outskirts with the help of excavators gathered from all over the city. About 70 kilometers from Mykolaiv, near the town of Voznesensk, fighters of the 80th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces blew up a bridge over the Mertvovod River. This stopped the further advance of mechanized columns of the enemy and did not allow them to capture the South Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plant. They also failed to secure positions near Voznesensk.
The maximum achievement of the Russians in this direction was a landing at the Mykolaiv airport. But Ukrainian troops managed to drive the occupiers out of the airport. Failing to fulfill the order to encircle Mykolaiv and reach the border with Moldova, the occupiers returned to the Kherson region.
On the other side of the south of Ukraine, in the direction of Berdyansk and Mariupol, events unfolded more dramatically. After brief battles on the border with Crimea, the Russians broke through the defense of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and within a few hours reached the outskirts of Melitopol. Notably, at the time the war began, there were no Ukrainian troops from Crimea to Melitopol. A small garrison was in the city itself, which managed to delay the Russians for a short time. There was not a single brigade that could cover Mariupol from the side of Crimea, near Melitopol or Berdyansk.
On February 26, the remnants of the Ukrainian troops retreated from Melitopol to the north, to Vasylivka, and then to the village of Kamianske in the Zaporizhzhia region, where they managed to secure positions and prevent the enemy from advancing further north, to Zaporizhzhia. The capture of Melitopol, which occurred on February 25, meant that the 500-thousand-strong Mariupol was doomed to be encircled.
Why couldn’t the Ukrainian army stop the enemy in the south? About a year after the war began, Ukrainian society actively discussed the conspiracy theory that the border with Crimea had been demined in advance. And this was supposedly done according to secret agreements reached in Oman between Zelensky and Patrushev, so that the Russians could easily occupy the so-called land corridor between Russia and Crimea. Some instead of Zelensky put Yermak in the place of the main traitor, but the essence did not change much.
In 2023, when journalists began to actively research this topic, the version about demining disappeared. Minefields on the border with Crimea indeed existed, but this did not mean that the entire border was covered with them. The main part of the Russian troops burst into the Kherson region along paved roads that connect the Crimean peninsula with mainland Ukraine.
As for the Ukrainian military, in their opinion, the main problem of the defense of the south was the lack of personnel. According to Major General Andriy Sokolov, who was responsible for the southern direction in February 2022, at the time of the invasion, the Russians had a 20 to 1 advantage. About 25 battalion tactical groups (20,000 people) with air support advanced from Crimea. On the Ukrainian side, the border with the peninsula was defended by 1500–1600 people. Of them, only 250 fighters of the 137th Marine Infantry Battalion were directly on the border with Crimea.
To understand the difficult situation in which the Ukrainian military found themselves, it is enough to say that these 250 military personnel from the 137th battalion were divided into three platoons. The first platoon (15-45 people) was located at a support point directly in front of the Chongar bridge. The second platoon held positions at the Kalanchak checkpoint. And the third platoon was at the village of Kairy − this is the Chaplynka checkpoint, opposite the “Titan” chemical plant. These three platoons met the occupiers on February 24.
Who is to blame for the catastrophe in the south? Military personnel, who for obvious reasons cannot publicly criticize the political leadership, hint at a lack of personnel. The defense plan assumed that the southern direction should be protected by four brigades. In reality, on February 24, 2022, only one brigade in incomplete composition defended the border with Crimea.
Zelensky categorically refused to implement the defense plan. Even though, starting in November, US intelligence directly indicated that Putin was planning to start a war. The first and main reason why the president refused to strengthen the defense was financial. On February 18, six days before the start of the full-scale war, in an interview with the news agency “RBK-Ukraine,” Zelensky frankly and with childlike directness explained his position: “We can increase the army two or three times, but then, for example, we will not be able to build roads.” In other words, Zelensky did not want to give up the corruption scheme, hoping that everything would somehow calm down. Putin is just scaring, and the money is here and now, just reach out.
The second reason for the catastrophe in the south was the wrong strategy for defending this direction. According to Major General Sokolov, the strategic defense line should have run along the Dnieper. Blowing up the Antonovsky Bridge could, at least for a few days, stop the Russian troops in front of Kherson. During these days, it was possible to stabilize the situation and pull up reserves. But the Antonovsky Bridge was not even mined. Whose fault is this? Some believe that the commander of the Joint Forces, Lieutenant General Serhiy Naev, should be held responsible. Others blame the President’s Office, which prohibited blowing up bridges without their order.
The analysis of military operations in 2023 showed that on the Zaporizhzhia direction, the Russians took half a year to build an impregnable line of defense with numerous minefields and a multi-level system of fortifications. All this could have been built on the border with Crimea. Especially since the geographical location for defense there is much more favorable than in Zaporizhzhia. However, by the time of the invasion, the Ukrainian army had not built anything similar. General Sokolov explains this by the fact that the land plots on which it was necessary to build a system of fortifications on the border with Crimea were privately owned. Without the introduction of martial law, the army had no right to use them or mine them. Only the president had the right to introduce martial law or a defense plan.
Without a doubt, the forces available at that time for the defense of the south were extremely insufficient. This problem could only be solved by increasing mobilization. And again, only the Supreme Commander-in-Chief — President Zelensky — could give an order for this. Neither Zaluzhny, Naev, nor Defense Minister Reznikov had such powers.
Transferring troops to the south from other directions was impossible. Troops were lacking everywhere, not only at the border with Crimea. Kyiv was covered by only one 72nd brigade. Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, was covered by only one 92nd brigade. Taking troops from Donbas was extremely risky, as the main strike was expected there.
Additional mobilization, which Zelensky refused, could have saved both Melitopol and Mariupol. But it was not conducted. In the opinion of the Ukrainian president, building roads was more important than preparing for war.