As part of the sprawling Soviet counteroffensive following the victory at Kursk, Red Army units advanced through southern Ukraine in early October 1943, driving Wehrmacht forces westward toward the Dnieper. The campaign, involving over a million troops, marked a decisive turning point on the Eastern Front, as Germany's occupation of Ukraine began to collapse.
By October 1943 the strategic initiative on the Eastern Front had shifted decisively to the Soviets. After breaking German lines at Kursk in the summer, Red Army commanders launched a series of interlocking offensives across a front stretching more than 1,000 kilometers, aiming to reclaim the industrial and agricultural heartland of Ukraine before winter.
German Army Group South, badly depleted after two years of brutal fighting and unable to replace losses at the rate the Soviets could, fought a series of costly delaying actions while retreating toward the Dnieper River, which Hitler had ordered fortified as an 'impregnable' line. In practice, Soviet forces crossed the river at multiple points within weeks, exposing the hollowness of German defensive promises.
The fighting devastated the Ukrainian countryside, with retreating German forces implementing scorched-earth tactics, destroying crops, infrastructure, and livestock to deny resources to the advancing Soviets. Civilians caught between the armies suffered massacres, forced deportations for labor in Germany, and starvation, making the liberation of Ukraine one of the most destructive campaigns of the entire war even as it hastened Germany's eventual defeat.