Ukraine Launches Assault On Black Sea Peninsula

Ukraine’s military said it launched an operation to push Russian forces from a strategic peninsula on the country’s Black Sea coast, as Kyiv looks to open up its besieged ports and build on significant gains through the country’s south, Jared Malsin reported for The Wall Street Journal.

Photo Insert: Reclaiming the peninsula could also provide relief to hundreds of thousands of people living in the Mykolaiv region.

Ukrainian forces have begun an assault on the Kinburn Spit, a strip of land jutting into the sea south of Mykolaiv that has been occupied for months by Russian forces cutting off access to the port city.

“For now, this military operation is on silent mode,” said a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command on Ukrainian television late Monday. She didn’t say when the operation had started but said stormy weather provided an advantage for Ukrainian forces in the area.

The larger Kinburn Peninsula is a key strategic prize for Ukraine. The sliver of land lies at a key maritime choke point leading to the port cities of Mykolaiv and Kherson, at the mouth of two large rivers, the Southern Buh and the Dnipro.

Russian forces have used the spit to launch missile, drone and artillery strikes that have hammered the city of Mykolaiv, which remains in Ukrainian control but has suffered under heavy Russian fire throughout the war.

Reclaiming the peninsula could also provide relief to hundreds of thousands of people living in the Mykolaiv region. The near-constant Russian shelling has damaged schools, hospitals, grain silos, port infrastructure and many civilian homes.

The governor of the Mykolaiv region, Vitaliy Kim, said in a social-media post on Tuesday that the capture of three more settlements on the peninsula would put the entire region under Ukrainian control.

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