Ukraine says with new offensive, it can reclaim territory lost to Russia — but is that realistic?

The way the Kremlin appears to see it, the southern Ukrainian port city of Kherson on the Dnipro River has already been subsumed into the Russian Federation.

Home to 280,000 people before the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, Kherson was the first major population centre in the embattled country to fall to Russian troops, and its Russia-appointed administrators have expedited efforts to erase all signs of Ukrainian sovereignty.

They have distributed Russian passports to residents, introduced Russian banks, brought in Russian mobile phone companies and made the ruble the legal currency, replacing the Ukrainian hryvnia.

But with the war days away from entering its sixth month, Ukrainian authorities are signalling that the time is fast approaching when its military will attempt to retake the captured city and expel its Russian occupiers.

President Volodymr Zelenskyy and members of his administration have urged civilians to get out of the way.

"I know for sure that there should not be women and children there, and that they should not become human shields," Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said recently.

For the last six weeks, piecemeal Ukrainian assaults have chipped away at Russian-held territory in the country's south, allowing its soldiers to get within 20 kilometres of Kherson.

"Forty-four settlements have already been liberated in Kherson Oblast," Dmytro Butriy, the acting head of the region's military administration, told an online news conference in Kyiv on Thursday.

"The situation there is difficult," he continued, claiming the destruction from Russian shelling is "massive" and that homes, schools and many other buildings have been damaged.

But whether that's as far as the counter-offensive gets and how much force Ukraine's military can muster after weeks of bruising fighting in the southeastern Donbas region remains unclear.

Retired Ukrainian colonel Serhiy Grabsky argues that the fate of Russian President Vladimir Putin's war hinges on his military holding Kherson — and of Ukraine being able to pry it away.

"That location will open the door for the liberation of all of the country and the termination of all of Russia's strategic goals," said Grabsky, who served in several international roles over a 28-year career, including as a military adviser to the Iraqi government.

He said pushing Russia out of Kherson would end any threat to Ukrainian cities, such as Mykolaiv and Odesa, and put Russian military installations in the Crimean Peninsula within reach of Ukraine's new Western weaponry — including long-range American HIMARS rocket launchers.

"We could put under 'fire control,' as we call it, all the exits from Crimea," Grabsky said.