The Ukrainian attack on the Russian command bunker on April 7.
Ukrainian defense ministry capture
Lobbing a precision-guided bomb from potentially tens of miles away, a Ukrainian air force fighter—possibly an upgraded Mikoyan MiG-29—hammered a Russian bunker in southern Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast on Monday.
As many as 30 Russians from the command staff of the 81st Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment died, according to the Ukrainian general staff in Kyiv. In the aftermath of the daylight raid, a Ukrainian drone observed the survivors of the attack digging through the rubble with their hands.
It was at least the second bunker-busting raid the Ukrainian air force has conducted in recent days. On March 31, one of the supersonic MiG-29s hurled a boutique, American-made GBU-62 glide bomb at a former Soviet air-defense bunker—also in Kherson—that was occupied by a Russian command group.
A successful attack on a command bunker “minuses the high-ranking officer corps along with equipment,” one Ukrainian blogger explained. “Such strikes deprive enemy forces of clear control, and also significantly demoralize the military unit.”
It’s not for no reason the Ukrainian air force went after the 81st Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment’s command bunker. The regiment, part of the 70th Motorized Rifle Division—itself part of the 18th Combined Arms Army—lends critical heavy firepower to Russian forces on the left bank of the wide Dnipro River threading through Kherson.
A Russian command bunker explodes on March 31.
Ukrainian defense ministry capture
Kill the commanders
Twenty-eight months after a swift Ukrainian offensive liberated much of Kherson, Russian troops may be plotting a new offensive of their own. When NPR visited a Ukrainian artillery battery on the right bank of the Dnipro recently, the Ukrainian gunners worried aloud about possible Russian mobilization in the area.
One gunner claimed he welcomed a Russian attack across the Dnipro. “We look forward to the Russians trying to attack us,” he told NPR. “It would give us a chance to destroy more of them.”
But Ukrainian troops are thin on the ground in Kherson as the general staff in Kyiv concentrates its best heavy forces in the east, where the Ukrainians are finally reversing some recent gains by increasingly weary Russian field armies.
The Ukrainian marine corps’ 34th, 39th and 40th Coastal Defense Brigades—new units largely equipped with light vehicles that are suitable for operations on muddy terrain—anchor Ukrainian defenses in Kherson. But they’re outnumbered by a dozen or more Russian regiments and brigades.
Blowing up command bunkers and burying the officers in the rubble can offset the Russians’ manpower advantage—by depriving that manpower of leadership.
