[YouTube] While much of the narrative around the early stages of Russia's 2022 invasion center on the battle for Kyiv and the reverses Russia suffered there, in the South, the Russian invasion was altogether more successful in its opening moves. Advancing from Crimea, the Russians rapidly secured a number of critical positions in the South of the country, including a regional capital on the right bank of the Dnipro, the city of Kherson.
The fighting to take back Kherson would be some of the hardest for Ukrainian forces. They would face a number of high quality Russian units who were heavily dug in, and they would do it over unfavourable ground.
The fighting would take months and claim many lines before the final Russian withdrawal in November.
This is the story of that campaign - from the city's fall to its liberation, along with some of the lessons and observations that we can (with admittedly low confidence levels) make using the data available so far.
Caveats:
Data quality and certainty will always vary video to video. In the case of this video, the topic in question is battlefield movements and the conduct of operations. As such, there is a considerably lower level of confidence than there are over major economic patterns for example.
I expect that at least some of this analysis will be refuted or augmented by later discoveries or data releases - at which point I will prepare an update. But given the implications of this campaign, I thought it best to try and tell the story now, with the best information we currently have available.