Operation in Krynky: Media tells details of marines’ landing on left bank of Kherson region
The operation to land the Defense Forces on the left bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region lasted from October 2023 to July 2024. In total, it lasted 9 months, of which only the first two or three months the initiative belonged to the Ukrainian army.
This is stated in the material of "Ukrainska Pravda", Censor.NET informs.
Only after Ukrainian troops finally withdrew from the left bank this summer, journalists managed to talk to soldiers, officers, brigadiers, deputies, volunteers and other people who were informed about the operation.
The role of the United Kingdom
According to the publication, the landing operation on the left bank of the Kherson region was not without the participation of the United Kingdom, which, as a maritime power, advocated that Ukraine should pay more attention to the south. The point is to use such a powerful branch of the military as the marines for their intended purpose, i.e., for water operations and deceptive maneuvers.
Britain also promoted the idea that the Marines should leave the landings in Donetsk and start conducting operations on the water.
The idea, according to the article, did not resonate with either the then-commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi or the president. So in early 2023, the United Kingdom sent an official delegation to Kyiv to meet with Zaluzhnyi.
The meeting was also attended by Navy Commander Oleksii Neizhpapa and then-Marine Commander Yurii Sodol. Ukraine convinced the British that it could not launch marines because it did not have any equipment. The British said, "You haven't asked us for anything since the beginning of the Great War.
"The British said, 'You need to show that you are preparing several battalions of marines to cross the Dnipro so that the Russians start scratching their heads. Even the preparation of such maneuvers would send a serious message to the Russians," said a military officer involved with the marines.
These words, he says, amused Sodol and angered Neizhpapa, as he feared that in this way the marines, who are the backbone of the Navy's personnel, would be removed from the Navy.
On May 23, 2023, Zelenskyy officially announced the creation of the Marine Corps in the Armed Forces.
At that time, the 37th and 38th newly formed Marine Brigades had been training in the UK for several months. Each battalion had five weeks of training in turn. They were taught how to overcome water obstacles: to cross a river, land on the shore and conduct operations on land. They were also taught how to properly plan headquarters work and the execution of tasks.
A marine with the call sign Monk said that they already realized that they would have to conduct an operation to overcome water obstacles, but it was not known where exactly.
Two marine officers said that the landing on the left bank was planned for the summer of 2023, but the operation had to be postponed due to the explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station.
However, another military officer involved with the marines told a different story. "After the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant was blown up, our partners asked Ukraine: where are your marines, why aren't they taking advantage of the fact that the RF first line of defense on the left bank was washed away and not going on the offensive? In any case, the marines did not go on the offensive, because their destination was once again Donetsk region. The decision of the Ukrainian command can be justified by the fact that it wanted to "test" the new brigades on land before the operation on the water.
The plan of the operation
The "Krynky landing" operation was not intended to capture Krynky alone. Interlocutors in the command of the 36th Brigade and the Rada Defense Committee stated that the maximum objective of this operation was to reach Crimea, the Perekop Isthmus.
To do this, the marines had to cover a huge distance, by military standards, 80 kilometers deep into the territory that had been under occupation for a year and a half.
"The ultimate goal was universe's outer reaches: access to Crimea. We were told that we had to break through only the front line, which runs through the settlements closest to the coast - from Korsunka to Oleshky (40 kilometers along the Dnipro River - Ed.). There is no second echelon. That is, they are all stretched out in one lane," said a source in the 36th command.
"In the military, tasks are always set to the maximum. In this case, it was to reach the isthmus," confirmed the source in the Defense Committee.
The second task, the newspaper writes, was to expand the Kherson front and draw in enemy forces from the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions. Instead of two TDF brigades and several units of the SOF and DIU, the entire Marine Corps was engaged in drawing in the Russian army from the east.
"Our command realized that when we just stand on our right bank, not conducting active combat operations, they (Russians - Ed.) leave the Russian Guard, unnecessary people on the left bank. Paratroopers, infantry, and marines are being withdrawn and redeployed to the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk directions. That's why the command made a strategic decision to attack from here," says an interlocutor from the Defense Committee.
The marines believed in this operation and called it a potential game changer for the entire war.
"If we could create larger bridgeheads at the designated points and unite with everyone in one line, it would have drawn in the enemy's huge forces in the direction of Robotyn and changed the course of the war. It would have taken the Russians weeks or even months to move their personnel. Accordingly, their logistics would have been severely disrupted, their work would have been weakened, and we could have pushed them towards Armiansk," said the fighter with the call sign Monk.
In September 2023, the marines were withdrawn from the offensive in the Velyka Novosilka area and redeployed to the south. There, both those who had studied abroad and those who fought had a few weeks to prepare and harmonize.
The beginning of the operation
The marines received the combat order to land on the left bank in early October 2023. The soldiers of the rank and file, the people who had to literally do the operation with their own hands, did not hesitate to call the command's plans obscene when talking to journalists. They said that we had already lost a lot of people in the Zaporizhzhia direction, on land, so what would happen in the Kherson region on the big water?
"The command gave three brigades of marines 3-4 days to capture a wide 30-kilometer strip of land - approximately from the Antonivskyi railway bridge to Krynky - and advance to the M-14 highway. Advancing to the highway means another 5-7 kilometers deeper into the occupied coast. By military standards, this is a huge distance," the article says.
According to one of the marines, everyone thought it would be either a huge failure or a huge success. But in fact, it was neither.
The landing operation on the left bank began around October 10-16, 2023.
In the first days, due to the effect of surprise and a relatively weak enemy, everything went well. The 36th crossed the Antonivskyi railway bridge (by the way, the first assault group of the 36th was formally formed from a military band) and occupied the village of Poima. The 38th captured some of the solar panels, and the 35th began to seize Krynky.
However, according to the publication, the planning of the operation failed. The 36th Brigade was the first to suffer. Its assault troops, who had been successfully moving along the railroad bridge, were left without the opportunity to bring in ammunition load, rations and, most painfully, without shelter.
"This railroad bridge is just three and a half kilometers of embankment in the floodplains, which bumps up against the village of Poima. To the right and left is a swamp. We realized that it was a one-way road. There was nowhere to hide. We asked them to build at least some kind of logistics chain - to set up 10-15 observation posts so that we could accumulate ammunition, food, water, medicine, and evacuation from one post to another. We had no logistics at all!
We said it would be just murder. We were told: no, go on to Poima. We sent another battalion there, which the Russians defeated with Iskanders under the railroad bridge on the 19th. At first, two or three Iskanders hit, and then they finished us off with drops and tanks. We lost 90 people killed and wounded," said a source in the 36th Brigade command.
This was the first major loss of the Marine Corps in this operation.
After this incident, the 36th continued to fulfill the task of capturing the left bank. First, it went to the previously identified Poima, then, together with the 38th Brigade, captured Kliushka and the solar panels.
"We were promised artillery training, a bunch of equipment that would work in our favor: "Haymars will work like machine guns!". But in the end, we were deceived," he added, noting that this was promised by General Sodol.
In late October and early November, due to the impossibility of simultaneously holding three "footholds," the marines withdrew from two of them: the Antonivskyi railway bridge area and the area nicknamed "Kliushka" and concentrated their forces in Krynky.
The road to Krynky
To get to Krynky, the marines had to cross the wide Dnipro River, then reach the islands, walk a couple of kilometers along them, sometimes wait in minimal shelter (holes) and cross the Konka/ Krynka rivers. In general, the journey from one bank to the other could take from several hours to a day.
It was impossible to gain a foothold on the islands. They looked like a swampy area, covered with craters from hits and fallen trees. It was impossible to dig into them: as soon as you stuck a shovel into the "soil" several times, the potential shelter was filled with water.
That's why the same craters from artillery strikes often became shelters. According to the marines, the "shelters" from the drones were garbage stuck in the trees after the high water receded due to the explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant. Some people were deliberately "lost" on the islands to avoid swimming to the left bank, the newspaper notes.
Two of the interlocutors, including a drone operator, received orders to take up positions on the islands to be closer to the enemy, but they refused because it would be suicide.
After small rivers were cleared of mines in December 2023, the route from the government-controlled shore of Kherson region to Krynky became continuous and took much less time - 40-50 minutes. However, there was a shortage of boats and EWs on them.
Some boats were provided by the Navy, but the brigades had to get most of them on their own, mostly through volunteers.
The military said that sometimes they had to return to the right bank on car tires because there were no boats, people were forced to drink water from the Dnipro due to lack of logistics, and the wounded decided to commit suicide because of the lack of evacuation.
"At first we had boats, and then we started losing them quickly. The first ones were for 8-10 people, and when they were all destroyed, we were traveling in boats for three people. To pull me out when I was wounded, for example, we lost three boats," said Hans from the 35th Brigade.
According to UP's interlocutors, the landing points on the left bank were one of the places where Ukrainian soldiers were most often wounded and killed. The Russians shot them down quite quickly with artillery.
They had to save not even minutes but seconds during the landing. That's why, for example, the scouts of the 501st Battalion, who had trained to land in full ammunition and life jackets, refused to wear them during the operation.
An interlocutor involved in the marines and the preparation of this operation assured journalists that the allies were ready to provide the marines with everything from boats to vests. However, it was Ukraine itself that did not do enough. The high military command, which allegedly received a list of everything the marines needed in late spring 2023, did not pass these lists on to its partners.
The Navy press service suggested that journalists contact the General Staff. They said that this "constitutes a state secret and is not subject to public disclosure."
Two unrelated interlocutors mentioned the difficult relationship between Neizhpapa and Sodol.
The interlocutors also said that the commander of the operation, Lieutenant General Sodol, sailed to Krynky at the beginning of the operation, in the fall of 2023. In order to show the commanders and soldiers that the tasks he had set were realistic.
"In parallel with the assaults on Krynky themselves, the marines tried to recapture the forest from the Russians on both sides of the village, that is, in the direction of Kozachy Laheri and Korsunka. But it was difficult to do so in a dense forest where it was difficult to even see the enemy, who also had stable logistics. And with the onset of cold weather, it became increasingly unbearable to keep the defense in holes in the forest, covering ourselves with branches and periodically warming up in the village. Some spent two months in the forest.
At the same time, the entire forest, according to the marines' interrogations of prisoners, was filled with the bodies of Russian soldiers. That is, the idea of drawing the enemy in and killing them was working. Mostly Russians were killed by Ukrainian artillery and drone drops," the article says.
In the winter of 2023-2024, the situation began to deteriorate. At that time, the Russians had already deployed their paratroopers there, destroyed a large part of the village with GABs, and river routes that were raked with fire, especially the turns where the boat slows down and the landing points.
"Somewhere between late winter and early spring, it became very sad. In fact, boats were no longer reaching the left bank. The entrances to the Konka from Dnipro were already shot at. Boats were shot up on the way in, or a boat managed to get in, picked up people, and was destroyed on the way out. At some point, not a single boat could get through. And everyone realized that we could no longer pick up our people from there. We dropped vests to our last men by drone, and they returned by swimming," says the marine officer.
In the winter of 2024, Ukrainian forces gradually began to withdraw from the left bank, while Russian forces, on the contrary, were pulling up their reserves. In May, the situation became catastrophic. In July 2024, the last marines, soldiers of the 35th Brigade, left the shore.
Almost all of the interlocutors of the publication are convinced that the operation was overdue for at least several months.
The results of the operation
The landing operation on the left bank did not allow the Ukrainian army to advance to the Crimean isthmus or even to the M-14 highway, which is 5-7 kilometers inland.
The military and interlocutors in the Defense Committee believe that the main achievement of the Krynky operation was the significant destruction of enemy manpower and its withdrawal from other areas.
The publication notes that the pace of Russian advance in Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia during the operation on the left bank was indeed slower than today. However, it is unlikely that the reason for this is solely due to the enemy's drawing in to the Kherson region at the time.
"No figures on the number of destroyed enemy or their equipment on the left bank, as, for example, in the case of Kursk, were given during the 10 months of the operation and after it. The General Staff, in response to the UP's request, classified even this data as "constituting a state secret and not subject to public disclosure," the article says.
The marine officer noted that working on the Russians from the right bank, which is controlled by the government, would not have yielded the desired result.
A source in the defense committee, who is outside the Marine Corps but is well informed about the operation and the overall situation at the front, says that Ukraine cannot simply stand on the defensive for a long time given the lack of people and ammunition. After all, eventually this defense will simply collapse, which is what is happening now in the Donetsk region. Therefore, the Defense Forces must take risks and seize the initiative on the battlefield.
Lieutenant General Yurii Sodol, the former commander of the marines and the left bank landing operation, read a message from a journalist asking for a comment on the operation. But he did not respond.
Another interlocutor, a brigade commander of one of the brigades that took part in the operation, actually calls it a stillborn child. After all, even if the marines had managed to capture the three claimed bridgeheads on the left bank, they would still not have had enough troops to hold them.
