The Dnieper, a river that has become a front line between Russians and Ukrainians

The mouth of the Dnieper, which flows into the Black Sea, forms a delta of 350 square kilometers. 1.2 kilometers wide, it is difficult to cross for an army. The river then divides into several arms between which strips of land form islets sometimes wide enough to accommodate dwellings.

This delta is dominated, to the north, by the Kherson city
which had 280,000 inhabitants before the war. It is not the most important city in southern Ukraine, but it is the only administrative capital that Russia manages to conquer.

It is by the Antonivsky highway bridge, capable of supporting the passage of armor, that the battalions of the Russian army positioned in the Crimea were able to cross the Dnieper in the very first hours of the invasion. The army occupies the city of Kherson and both banks of the Dnieper, until its withdrawal on November 10, 2022.

The Russian troops entrench themselves behind the Dnieper. After their departure, the motorway bridge ofAntonivsky and the railway bridge ofAntonivka have been damaged and become unusable. To cross the Dnieper, the nearest passage is now 70 kilometers to the east.

As Moscow’s troops advanced to the outskirts of Mykolaiv, their withdrawal on the other side of the Dnieper sees the risk of losing this city, the last barrier before the port of Odessa, receding for the Ukrainians.

The Russian army now camped on a single bank where it fortified its positions along the river by the
construction of lines of defense , which resemble trenches or fortifications.

The Dnieper constitutes a front line on which
the bombings
target strategic sites as well as communication routes and residential areas.

The M14 motorway is a strategic axis linking the port of Odessa to that of Mariupol occupied by the Russian army since May 2022. It is also a supply route for Moscow troops from Crimea, and from the border with Russia.

The Crimean Canal, built in Soviet times, supplies water to the Crimea from the Dnieper. It is thanks to this major project that the region has become viable both agriculturally and industrially. After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Ukrainian government had reduced the flow of the canal, until its closure in 2019. From the end of February 2022, the Russian army opened the floodgates to restore water to the canal and restock the peninsula.

The Kakhovka hydroelectric power station supplies southeastern Ukraine with energy.

The Kakhovka Reservoir is a water reservoir, upstream of the Crimean Canal, which regulates irrigation. Whether the dam of the hydroelectric plant were to be destroyed, the Dnieper could overflow, flooding the Kherson region and depriving the Crimea of ​​electricity.

Zaporizhia nuclear power plant is the most powerful in Europe. It is located more than 60 kilometers from the city of the same name, in the port of Enerhodar, located on the bank of the Dnieper today held by the Russians. The plant borders the Dnieper, whose waters cool the six VVER-1000 nuclear reactors. In peacetime, the plant produced more than a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity. It has been occupied by Russian troops since March 4, 2022.

Going up the Dnieper towards Zaporijia,
six hydroelectric dams one after the other. The destruction of one of these structures could threaten the infrastructures located downstream of the river with flooding.

far from the front, the cities of Zaporizhia and Dnipro, populated by 800,000 and one million inhabitants respectively before the war, are not currently under fire from the Russian army. It is at this level of the river that the Ukrainian army can envisage, today, crossing the Dnieper to retake, to the south, the city of Melitopol and thus cut off the supply axis between Crimea and Mariupol. For now, Russians and Ukrainians are facing each other around the Dnieper, the natural border between the two armies.