Success On "Forgotten" Ukrainian Southern Front Has Aided Recent Donbas Gains

The southern Ukrainian battlefields in Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea have recently been treated as secondary sectors, with the Russians having made Donbas its primary focus. 

But Ukrainian successes in the south have undermined the Kremlin's designs on taking the Fortress Belt and all of Donbas. And Ukraine's advances in the south have also weakened Russia's hold on Crimea, by making it a difficult place to live, let alone stand as a logistics center for the war to the north. Those strategic victories have, in fact, made it much harder for the Kremlin to pursue its war by denying Russia any material benefits in those sectors. JL

The World Strategist reports:

The southern front is not neglected because it is unimportant. It is complex, multi-dimensional and hard to boil down into simple headlines. No dramatic sieges of cities, no sweeping attacks by armored columns, no one decisive battle. It is a grinding patient campaign to cut off Russia’s supply lines, isolate its forces and make its position in the south untenable.  That campaign is paying off. Ukraine has taken back hundreds of square kilometers of territory. It has stopped Russian advances toward Zaporizhzhia City. It has severed Russian supply lines across the Dnipro. It has taken out 183 vessels from Russia’s shadow fleet. It has turned Crimea into a “island” with no fuel, no summer camps, and patchy electricity. And it has forced Russia to withdraw from the Kinburn Spit, the westernmost foothold of its occupation.

Ukrainian forces continue to occupy the commanding heights on the west bank of the Dnipro River, and Russian efforts to establish positions on the islands in the Dnipro Delta are swiftly countered by artillery and swarms of FPV drones. In May 2026, Ukrainian forces targeted a Russian command and observation post near occupied Lyubimivka, northeast of Kherson City. And in June 2026, Ukrainian forces cut off Russian supply lines on the Kherson left bank, striking the road bridge over the Henichesk Strait near Henichesk.

Russian troops reportedly refuse to carry out missions involving crossing the Dnipro River and landing on the islands. “Any attempt to make a crossing over the Dnieper in 2026 will be accompanied by rapid destruction with high-precision weapons,” one assessment read.

The Kakhovka Basin: Jungle War

The drained basin of the Kakhovka reservoir is one of the war’s most surreal and underreported battlefields.

Russian forces blew up the Kakhovka Dam in June 2023, draining one of Ukraine’s largest reservoirs and leaving behind a vast flood plain that has since become a forest of reeds, scrub and willow thickets. This forbidding terrain is now a frontline between the Russian and Ukrainian armies, where drones are unable to penetrate the cover of the high weeds and soldiers hunt each other on foot in a fatal game of cat and mouse. “‘It is opaque, it is hard, it is confusing and it is very dangerous,’ says an operations commander with the call sign Divisiya. It’s a thick jungle, hot and humid to the point of suffocation and full of mosquitoes. You can’t see the enemy, or your own buddy if he is less than 3m from you.

Russian soldiers are attempting to forge routes to their main objective, the city of Zaporizhzhia, on the northern shoreline of the former reservoir. Ukrainian soldiers lie in wait to ambush them. Russian forces have poured hundreds of troops into the reservoir, which is about 95km long and 24km wide. “They have already brought everything there, set up observation posts, places to concentrate troops,” says battalion commander Oleksiy Serediuk. “We are looking for them, they are looking for us”

The fighting here is reminiscent of an older type of war, close combat, ambushes and infantry patrols, in a landscape where drones cannot dominate. It is a reminder that even in this conflict, with its technological revolution, there are still battles fought at close quarters, in the mud and reeds, by soldiers who can hardly see each other.

Crimea: The Ukraine Building The Island

The most important component of Ukraine’s southern campaign is the systematic isolation of Crimea.

Ukraine is ramping up an air campaign to isolate the peninsula, which Russia annexd in 2014, to pressure Moscow. That has opened a new pressure point for President Vladimir Putin as advances in Ukrainian drone and missile production have enabled Kyiv to mount larger strikes able to more easily overwhelm Russian air defenses further from the front.

The results have been ruinous. Summer camps are being evacuated, canceled. Gas is not available anywhere. The people are fleeing. And the power is going out.

Ukrainian forces have hit oil depots, gas compressor stations, air defense systems and radar systems across the peninsula. In June 2026, Ukrainian strikes on Crimea knocked out power in Sevastopol, the largest city on the peninsula. Ukraine’s army has targeted Russian logistics to the region, hitting oil refineries and depots across southern Russia, forcing Crimea to stop selling fuel to the public. Authorities in occupied Crimea declared a state of emergency after repeated explosions at refineries.

In June 2026 UK Defense Intelligence assessed the campaign, saying strikes on Russian air defense systems, fuel depots and three car ferries had “almost certainly exacerbated mounting supply issues in Crimea”, with severe fuel shortages and delays at crossing points. Security protocols after the first Ukrainian strike on the Kerch Bridge in October 2022 mean heavy trucks can only use ferries, not the bridge which is used by passenger cars, busses and some rail transport. In March and April 2026, Ukraine hit two remaining Russian ferries that also were used to support military logistics.

The strategy is clear. Ukraine’s Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov put it like this: the aim is to turn Crimea into a “island.” With very unexpected consequences for Russia. “We are closing the beach season in Crimea,” Fedorov said in a Facebook post.

The logic is clear, explained military expert Oleksandr Kovalenko: “Crimea is not the end goal for the Defense Forces of Ukraine, it is a transit hub that helps the entire occupied south. Supplies come over the Kerch Bridge, through Crimea’s land corridors and the occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhya oblasts to Berdyansk and Mariupol. “Cutting the logistics of Crimea is an automatic threat to the whole Russian occupation grouping in the region.

The Kinburn Spit Russia Retreats

One of the biggest — and least reported — developments in the southern campaign was Russia’s apparent pullback from the Kinburn Spit, a narrow strip of land Moscow had hailed as one of its most important victories on the southern front.

In June 2026, a member of the Crimean-based Ukrainian partisan group Atesh said Russian troops appeared to have vacated the disputed strip of land between the Dnipro-Bug estuary and the Black Sea at the tip of the Kinburn Peninsula, just northwest of Crimea. The primary reason, the agent said, was that Ukrainian drone strikes had “completely disrupted” their supplies. Crucial supplies of ammunition, fuel and food had been completely cut off and most of the personnel of Russia’s 337th VDV Regiment had been redeployed.

The Kinburn Spit had been losing its strategic significance for some time. Russia has abandoned plans to take Odesa and the situation around Kherson City and along the Dnipro River has largely stalled. But even a Russian pullback would be a big deal, both symbolically and practically. “Russia would also no longer have the ability to use the spit as a forward position for observation, which it has been doing, and for its artillery and for drones, and for electronic warfare, and the harassment of shipping routes,” said Kingston-Cox, an analyst.

For Ukraine, the withdrawal would be “a step toward restoring safer navigation” in the Black Sea, if confirmed, removing a major obstacle for Ukrainian exporters who want to use the ports in Mykolaiv.

The Humanitarian Crisis: Civilians in the Crossfire

But beneath the military gains is a humanitarian catastrophe that is often overlooked.

“The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) said thousands of civilians are in mortal danger, face food shortages and lack medical aid amid hostilities in front-line areas of the occupied Kherson region. HRMMU interviewed more than 20 residents of frontline-adjacent communities in the occupied parts of Kherson region, including Oleshky and Hola Prystan. Ukrainian authorities say up to 6,000 civilians, including more than 180 children, are still in these communities.“Frequent attacks by short-range drones and the presence of landmines are having devastating consequences for thousands of people in these communities,” said Danielle Bell, Head of HRMMU. “People can’t get out, food can’t get in and sick and injured are not getting the medical assistance they need”.

In Oleshky and Hola Prystan alone, at least 29 civilians have been killed and another 54 injured, the HRMMU says in 2026 . Most civilians killed or injured during short-range drone attacks. In March 2026, a drone killed two civilians in Oleshky and wounded others waiting in a queue to get food. In another, a drone injured a local medic on a scooter in early May; a second drone strike shortly after the first killed the wounded medic and another man who came to his aid.

The second greatest threat has been landmines. In June, a convoy of civilian vehicles carrying food and humanitarian aid to Oleshky struck a landmine at the entrance to the city, killing one man and injuring three others. The last supermarket in Oleshky stopped functioning normally in January due to a lack of food. For months, the residents have been surviving on canned food and limited deliveries.

The situation in Oleshky is terrible. The most recent food delivery was on May 28, 2026. No road or street is free of mines. Russian soldiers give residents at checkpoints a simple message: go back and die there. Prewar, the town had a population of around 24,000, with some 50 children, but only about 2,000 remain. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was ready to help Ukraine with a humanitarian evacuation mission which Ukraine has organized. But Russia has not declared itself ready to go ahead. “Russia is silent,” says the exiled head of the Ukrainian Oleshky City Administration, Tetiana Hasanenko.

Strategic Significance The South is the Key

Why is the southern front so important?

The answer is geography and strategy. The southern front is the quickest way to Crimea — the peninsula Russia illegally annexd in 2014 and which is the keystone of its whole southern strategy. If Ukraine can push south far enough to threaten the land bridge between Russia and Crimea, it could isolate the peninsula, and threaten Russian positions there.

This is what Ukraine tried and failed to do in 2023. Now it is trying again, but with drones not tanks, and with more success. Ukrainian strikes have already thrown Russian logistics into such disarray that fuel shortages have spread throughout occupied territories and into Russia.

The southern campaign has also posed a strategic dilemma for Russia. The ISW assessed that Ukrainian counterattacks in the south “have created cascading operational and strategic effects against Russia’s ongoing Spring-Summer 2026 offensive against the Fortress Belt, forcing Russia to choose between defending against Ukrainian counterattacks or allocating manpower and resources to priority sectors.”

Thus, every Russian soldier and piece of equipment sent to defend the south is a soldier and piece of equipment not available for the offensive in the Donbas. The southern front is not a secondary theater. This is a strategic lever that Ukraine uses to shape the whole war.

Conclusion: The Front That Must Not Be Forgotten

The southern front is not neglected because it is unimportant. It is forgotten because it is complex, multi-dimensional and hard to boil down into simple headlines. No dramatic sieges of cities, no sweeping attacks by armored columns, no one decisive battle. It is nothing but a grinding patient campaign to cut off Russia’s supply lines, isolate its forces and make its position in the south untenable.

But that campaign is paying off.

Ukraine has taken back hundreds of square kilometers of territory. It has stopped Russian advances toward Zaporizhzhia City. It has severed Russian supply lines across the Dnipro. It has taken out 183 vessels from Russia’s shadow fleet in one operation. It has turned Crimea into a “island” with no fuel, no summer camps, and patchy electricity. And it has forced Russia to withdraw from the Kinburn Spit, the westernmost foothold of its occupation.

The war in Ukraine will not be won by who owns what village in the Donbas. It’s going to come down to who can support their forces and who can keep their supply lines open and who can make the other guy’s position untenable. By that measure, the southern front is no sideshow. It is the big event.

The forgotten front is the most important. And they’re winning there.