“The Ukrainians very clearly intend to take Kherson”affirmed Thursday October 13 on franceinfo Peer De Jong, vice-president of the THEMIIS institute, specialist in geopolitics and former colonel of the marine troops, while Russia announced to organize the evacuation towards its territory of the population of the region of Kherson, in the south of Ukraine against the counter-offensive of the Ukrainian army. “We have been rediscovering for two or three days the strong motivation of the Ukrainians”, notes Peer De Jong. According to him, “to conquer Kherson, it would be extremely favorable for the Ukrainians”.
franceinfo : Is this evacuation of civilians by the Russians in Kherson the announcement of an imminent offensive by the Ukrainian army?
Peer DeJong : There are two messages. The first is that, since the beginning of the war, people have been wary of the evacuations carried out by the Russians. We can imagine that we are witnessing in the coming weeks a kind of population exodus. People will flee the bombings and the war in the direction of Russia. So it’s a form of depopulation. The second thing is that this indicates that the Russians are in very great difficulty and that they are already planning very significant destruction of the city of Kherson. It is a harbinger of destruction to come, both Russians and Ukrainians. Kherson will end up on the battlefield. And we know that fighting in cities is extremely destructive.
The Russians are in the process of drawing, around the regions they occupy, lines, anti-tank ditches, a kind of border? Are they preparing for the arrival of winter by consolidating their position?
The Russians need about a month. Winter will come in a month. And in a month, the entire front will stabilize, with the exception of missile fire, which can continue. But the land front will stabilize. Today, the Russians need to stabilize this front. While the Ukrainians have exactly the opposite problem. They need to advance as much as possible so that this front is as far east as possible. So there is a double contradiction with an accentuation of the ground actions carried out by the Ukrainians.
And then, on the other hand, the Russians absolutely need to build a system. So they’re going to do a little Maginot line. A trench-based line is not impassable. They won’t be able to make a continuous line from the Black Sea to the North, to Belarus, it’s absolutely unthinkable. So they are preparing for positions that they will hold for part of the winter, if they can hold them. For two or three days we have rediscovered the strong motivation of the Ukrainians and the fact that the Ukrainians very clearly intend to take Kherson. The Russians want to stop the fight and the Ukrainians want to continue.
Kherson is a very important strategic place. We feel that the Ukrainians want to reconquer it before the arrival of winter. Would this be a very important signal?
There are two readings. The first is purely military since Kherson is a big city, a road junction, a railway junction on the Dnieper. And then it’s the city that controls the entrance to Crimea. It really is a focal point. It is a place from which one can carry out a maneuver, either towards the South, or towards the East, or towards the North-East. The second reading is totally psychological. It is the first city that was taken by the Russians in February 2022 and which was taken almost without fighting. They arrived in the city, they conquered the city extremely quickly. So there clearly, the Ukrainians have a revenge to take. They want to take back a city that is extremely symbolic. Conquering Kherson would be an extremely important, extremely favorable sign for the Ukrainians.