A Jungle War Emerges in Southern Ukraine’s Vanished Reservoir

The former Kakhovka Reservoir has turned into a battlefield where soldiers struggle to see even the people fighting beside them. Tall reeds, scrub and willow thickets now cover the flood plain, creating a hot, mosquito-filled maze in southern Ukraine.

Russian troops are trying to cut trails through the basin toward Zaporizhzhia, an industrial city on the reservoir’s northern shore. Ukrainian soldiers from the Bratstvo battalion move through the vegetation on foot, seeking positions from which to ambush them. Drones cannot easily penetrate the dense cover, forcing both sides into close-range patrols and reconnaissance.

“It is opaque, difficult, disorienting and very dangerous,” said an operations commander who uses the call sign Divisiya. He and most other soldiers in the battalion are identified by call signs under military protocol.

The reservoir disappeared after Russian forces destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in 2023, sharply reducing the Dnieper River’s water level. The dried basin has since become the latest setting in a four-year struggle over Zaporizhzhia. Russian troops came within 32 kilometers of the city center last summer, but Ukrainian forces, including military intelligence units such as Bratstvo, pushed them back in recent months.

Bratstvo returned to the area last winter to search for routes through reeds that towered over the soldiers. In December, a reconnaissance team encountered Russian troops positioned on a rocky outcrop that had once been an island. The Ukrainians killed four Russian soldiers and captured two others, according to battalion commander Oleksiy Serediuk, who said such missions also produced intelligence about Russian plans.

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It is opaque, difficult, disorienting and very dangerous.