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This article contains a translation of Бої за Херсон from uk.wikipedia.

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion:

• ZSU capture abandoned Russian ammo storage in Blahodatne.webm

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 18:51, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Controversy section

Hey Curbon7. Since you added the controversy template to the article, do you have any immediate issues/see non-neutral issues with the section? I'm asking because after my copy/edit request out right now for the article, I was hoping to GAN it. Any thoughts would be useful. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 03:12, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Generally, such controversy sections should be intertwined with the article rather than separated out. Good luck on the GAN. Curbon7 (talk) 18:24, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Natural and logical sectioning and organization

This way the timeline is subdivided, with each day as its own sub-subsection, isn't great. It doesn't make for a logical experience when looking at the table of contents. It might be possible to organize it by "phases" of the battle instead, like how battle of Avdiivka (2022–present) does it. HappyWith (talk) 21:40, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Do you have any suggestions? Maybe 24-28 Feb is around Kherson and then 1-2 March is in Kherson? But then again, 24 Feb had the airport strike plus 24-26 Feb involved the battles at the bridge, which is also in Kherson. I know what you mean that it isn't ideal, but I'm honestly not sure how else to organize it besides the timeline, since fighting took place around Kherson and in Kherson just about every day. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 21:48, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I see your point. I might try to do some research to find retrospectives on the battle that might help us with analyzing and organizing the article in a logical structure. HappyWith (talk) 21:55, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Hey HappyWithWhatYouHaveToBeHappyWith, I'm on a self-imposed 0RR restriction, but I think at least one reference (the NYT reference named under "falls" (<ref name="falls"/>) should probably be added next to the Russian victory in the infobox. Some of the battles, even when it is clear who the victor is also have a reference next to the "X victory" in the infobox, i.e. Battle of Kyiv (2022). Also, since there is a common mistake that Ukraine won the "Battle of Kherson" (due to some sources stating the "Battle of Kherson" was the event in November), the source should probably remain in the infobox at least for the time being. Thoughts? The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 22:29, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't think that's necessary - there's a hatnote at the top of the article saying this isn't the same thing as the November event, and there's sourced text that say it was a Russian victory easily findable in the lead and article body. Per MOS:INFOBOXREF, "References are acceptable in some cases, but generally not needed in infoboxes if the content is repeated (and cited) elsewhere or if the information is obvious". HappyWith (talk) 22:32, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I've reorganized it along the lines of the way this article does. Let me know if you have suggestions or criticism, I can adjust it. HappyWith (talk) 23:00, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Unit flags

I think a nice touch to the article would be to add some unit flags in the infobox like it was done in the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive page. Alexis Coutinho (talk) 22:03, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

MOS:INFOBOXFLAG recommends against this. HappyWith (talk) 22:06, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

😢 Alexis Coutinho (talk) 04:52, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

@HappyWithWhatYouHaveToBeHappyWith, the link you've provided appears to refer to infoboxes for military conflicts as exceptions to MOS:INFOBOXFLAG. SaintPaulOfTarsus (talk) 02:11, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Read it in full. It is not a blanket exception. Cinderella157 (talk) 05:27, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Edit request: "Teroboronov"

Please change "Kherson Teroboronov" to "Kherson Territorial Defense Forces," which is the English equivalent of the term that appears in the Ukrainian article. SaintPaulOfTarsus (talk) 17:24, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

 Done The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 17:41, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

WP:SYNTH: "Beginning the battle of Mykolaiv"

In the "Aftermath" section, the following sentence appears to violate WP:SYNTHESIS:

Later in March, Russia advanced westward, beginning the battle of Mykolaiv.

I'm making this claim because it seems that this sentence reaches a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source - the NYT article makes no mention of the Russian westward troop movement marking the beginning of a battle. Indeed, the bulk of RS report on combat in and around Mykolaiv well before the fall of Kherson, including during the last few days of February. SaintPaulOfTarsus (talk) 17:36, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

 Done — Removed. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 17:38, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Inconsistency in spelling of the surname of Kherson's mayor

The spellings "Kolykhaev," "Kolykhaiev," and "Kolykhayev" are variably used. SaintPaulOfTarsus (talk) 17:42, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Good catch. It's a bit like the Zelenskyy/Zelensky/Zelenskiy situation, where there is no established transliteration of his surname so RS use various different ones - but in this article, we should stick to one, preferably the one used in the name of his article. I'll try to get to this when I have time. HappyWith (talk) 18:27, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I just went through and changed them all to Ihor Kolykhaiev to match the title of his Wiki article. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 19:31, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Bullet points

Hey Cinderella157, I got a question. I looked over MOS:MIL and I am unable to locate where it says bullet points are not allowed. Could you point me to that and/or quote where it says that? The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 23:20, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

See section on infoboxes. It gives voice to the template documentation and explicitly states what is allowed. Dot points are not included in what is allowed. c (talk) 23:26, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi WeatherWriter, I took a look at the bullet points you had added and had a question about their content. Note that this is not related to the question on whether or not MOS:MIL allows for the use of bullet points, I just wasn't sure where else to put this - feel free to remove my reply and discuss elsewhere if you prefer.

• Russia captures Kherson and most of Kherson Oblast

To avoid possible synth I wanted to ask you to justify the implication that the occupation of most of the oblast was the result of a battle that took place only "in and around Kherson" according to the infobox and the content of the body. To geographically illustrate what I mean, out of the five raions of the Kherson Oblast, it is not clear how control over substantial parts of Beryslav Raion, Henichesk Raion, Skadovsk Raion, and Kakhovka Raion would have been affected by this battle.

SaintPaulOfTarsus (talk) 00:44, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

It wouldn't have been a synth violation. Some sources do state that fact. SCEEUS states, "Russian troops attacking from the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula quickly captured most of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblast" and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty stated, "Russian forces hold most of the part of the Kherson region that is on the east bank of the Dnieper." Exact raion controll wouldn't matter too much since sources state Russia had control of most of the oblast. Even a visual of the Russian occupation of Kherson Oblast infobox map elludes to that. Either way, the discussion I started at MOS:MIL will help solve if they are allowed or not. Some of the most searched battles have them and others don't, so the debate topic should get solved one way or another in that discussion. Thanks for the help and idea to avoid a synth issue! Cheers! The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 01:08, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

User:WeatherWriter, thank you for providing these souces. To be clear, I am not disputing that the majority of the Kherson oblast came under Russian control early on in the war. That's essentially indisputable.

What I do find questionable is the assertion you attempted to include in the results section of the infobox: the assertion that the majority of the oblast fell as a result of the battle covered in this article. The combat we're defining as the Battle of Kherson here seems to only have taken place within the city limits, in satellite villages such as Chornobaivka, and the nearby Antonivka Bridge; hence my mention of places like Skadovsk and the Beryslav Raion, relatively far from the action. Do RS claim that the oblast fell because the city fell? I wasn't able to locate that claim in the provided references.

SaintPaulOfTarsus (talk) 01:59, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

No, RS don't say that specifically. That said, the battle for Kherson Oblast was this battle, as given by the numerous other towns and cities mentioned during the battle, which Russia all gained control of prior to or on March 2. The occupation/military administration began once Kherson fell, i.e. Russia had almost all of Kherson Oblast when Kherson fell. It's sort of like how Vichy France began right after the ending of the Battle of France ended. So, while RS don't state it, it is an understood thing. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 06:18, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Dear @WeatherWriter:

Many thanks for your reply.

I'm glad you brought up the numerous other towns and cities mentioned during the battle. I was going to add another Talk page section to address this but decided that five in a single day was probably more than enough. By numerous other towns and cities, I assume you are primarily referring this sentence on the page: At the end of the day, Russian troops had captured several towns in the region including Henichesk, Skadovsk, Kakhovka, Nova Kakhovka, Tavriisk, as well as the Kakhovka Dam and the North Crimean Canal.

There's a major problem with this sentence: it's completely unsourced, and has been since you added it to the article on November 17th. From your edit summary, I became aware that you were adding content from uk:Бої за Херсон, and were calling on editors to check there for the attribution. Unfortunately, I checked the analogue sentence there and it also lacks a source. As things stand now, I believe the sentence constitutes an WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim that must be struck from the article until WP:RS can be found to support it, which will be relatively difficult to achieve considering the bulk of RS state that Russians didn't enter Skadovsk until March 9, 2022, like this one quoting the mayor of the city.

So, ignoring that one sentence for now, let's explore the numerous other towns and cities mentioned here. I see the following places: Kherson, Nova Kakhovka, Antonivka, Sadove, Oleshky, Chornobaivka, Zymivnyk, and Komyshany. With the exception of Nova Kakhovka, all of the numerous other towns and cities mentioned fall within an approximate 20km radius of the city center of Kherson, roughly following the curve of the Kherson Ring Road. Please understand that when we are talking about the Kherson Oblast here, we are talking about a place with a square area of nearly thirty thousand square kilometers. You can not realistically justify that the battle for Kherson Oblast was this battle when all the significant combat operations of this battle took place in a twenty kilometer radius.

In my opinion, once we start getting into comments like So, while RS don't state it, it is an understood thing to justify our arguments, we are entering extremely murky and frankly dangerous territory as editors, especially as it relates to a conflict still going on its second birthday with minimal formal military-historical analysis to draw on. I need to remind you, per WP:PST, that analyses and interpretive or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary or tertiary source and must not be an original analysis of the primary-source material by Misplaced Pages editors.

My very best wishes and thank you for your assistance in implementing my desired changes so far.

SaintPaulOfTarsus (talk) 07:12, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

• Cinderella157, do you have any other reason as to why bullet points should not be in this article? When asked about this on the MOS:MIL talk page, two different experienced editors basically said it wasn't a MOS:MIL problem. Basically, saying it isn't allowed under MOS:MIL isn't valid, just because it isn't there. You can see their replies here: Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style/Military history#Dot (Bullet) Points - Proposal to allow. One of them even said, It doesn't seem pertinent to this page, since it's a content dispute, and it belongs at Talk:Battle of Kherson. So, if I may, would you mind self-reverting or at least saying a different reason to not have bullet points? Also, if you decide to self-revert, feel free to help us not have a SYNTH issue with those bullet points. Cheers! The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 06:35, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

WP:ONUS applies. I don't think you can declare a consensus either here or at WT:MILMOS based on 2 responses there (that are arguably not incontrovertible) after 6.5 hours. Cinderella157 (talk) 11:26, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Edit requests: "194th Belozersky Battalion"

Hello again all, I'd like to address this page's mention of the "194th Belozersky Battalion."

The origin of this terminology appears to be the article titled "Подвиг у Бузковому парку," which tells the story of a military unit called the "194-ий білозерський батальйон" in Ukrainian.

(Presumably) machine translation turned "білозерський" into "Belozersky," likely influenced by the existence of several notable Russian people and Russian places named Belozersky.

But it must be noted that this translation process has taken a Ukrainian word and returned an English word that uses Russian romanization. Given that language is a particularly sensitive issue on articles relating to the Russo-Ukrainian crisis, I don't anticipate any opposition to my request that this article follow the Ukrainian romanization, Bilozersky, in order to properly represent the name of the military unit in question.

In addition to using Ukrainian romanization, I have another suggestion for the way that we translate the name of this military unit. The word "Bilozersky" here is just the adjectival form of Bilozerka, the village west of Kherson where the battalion was headquarted. The article mentions that nearly everyone in the battalion was a resident of a village in the Bilozerka Raion - specifically, it mentions people from Posad-Pokrovske, Chornobaivka, Stanislav, Naddniprianske, and Kyselivka. So maybe it's better for the readers' understanding if the name is translated as the 194th Bilozerka Battalion. Grammatically, it makes no real difference, and there's also the opportunity include a link to the location, so that the name appears as 194th Bilozerka Battalion. I'll leave this suggestion to the discretion of the editors with the ability to edit this page.

I also want to point out that for the Ukrainska Pravda article which contains all this information, the date of publication appears to have been mis-transcribed. It was published on November 8, 2022, not March 8, 2022.

Another small catch: In the infobox, you might also consider "pushing forward" the name of this battalion by one space, in order to represent its subservience to the 124th Kherson Territorial Defense Brigade, which is already well-established.

SaintPaulOfTarsus (talk) 00:18, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I will take a look at these in the morning and correct them. They all need fixed, but it will take some formatting/control + f searches to get them all. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 06:39, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

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