Russian, Ukrainian Troops Fight 3-Yard Ambush Battles in Kakhovka Basin

2 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Aug 27

Three years after the Kakhovka Dam was destroyed, the drained reservoir has turned into a reed-choked battlefield where Russian and Ukrainian soldiers stalk each other on foot at ranges of about three yards.
Tall weeds, scrub and willow thickets block drone surveillance, stripping both sides of a defining advantage of the war and forcing close-range ambushes in suffocating heat and mosquito-infested cover.
Russian troops are trying to cut trails through the former flood plain toward Zaporizhzhia on the basin’s northern shoreline, while Ukrainian units lie in wait along those approaches.
The fighting shows how terrain reshaped by the dam’s destruction has created a rare stretch of the front where the war’s usual drone dominance gives way to infantry cat-and-mouse combat.