The Northern Taurida operation (6 June – 3 November 1920) was a military campaign of the Russian Civil War between the Red Army and the Wrangel Russian Army for the possession of Northern Taurida. The campaign can be divided into 3 stages: the White offensive (6 June – 3 July), trench warfare around the Kakhovka Bridgehead (20 August – 27 October) and the counterattack of the Red Army (28 October – 3 November).
Prelude
In the course of the successive phases of the North Caucasus Operation in February-March 1920, the Red Army pushed the Armed Forces of South Russia out of the Northern Caucasus and Kuban. At the end of March, 35,000 White soldiers evacuated from Novorossiysk on British ships to Crimea. On 4 April 1920, Pyotr Wrangel became the new commander of the Armed Forces of South Russia and, on 11 May 1920, he reorganized it into the Russian Army.
Realizing the huge advantage of the Reds in the Civil War, Wrangel decided to take offensive actions, using the Red Army's involvement in Polish-Soviet War and the fact that the Red Army's Southern Front had been weakened in connection with it. The fight against Poland was directed by 1st Cavalry Army, leaving only the 6th and 13th Red Armies, along with the 2nd Cavalry Army, on the Southern Front. Meanwhile, by June 1920, Wrangel had mobilized about 40,000 soldiers under his command.
White offensive
Wrangel's plan was to leave Crimea and conquer Northern Taurida, which would make it easier to feed his army and strengthen its defensive positions. On 6 June 1920, the 2nd Army Corps under the command of Yakov Slashchov landed at Kyrylivka on the shore of the Sea of Azov, at the rear of the 13th Red Army. At the same time, the 1st Army Corps commanded by Alexander Kutepov tied down the main forces of the enemy by crossing the Isthmus of Perekop, while the corps of , composed mainly of Kuban Cossacks, attacked the reds from the direction of Chonhar. The White forces managed to surprise the Reds and forced the 13th Red Army to retreat. Over the next few days, Pisarev's troops captured Melitopol, while the 1st Army Corps reached Oleksandrivsk and threatened Katerynoslav. The Whites captured 8,000 prisoners, 30 artillery cannons and two armoured trains. The commander of the Russian Army, however, decided not to continue his march north, knowing that the 13th Army had not yet been defeated and that his own troops were still too weak to continue. Instead, Wrangel hoped to further expand his troops in the captured territory, twice as large as that controlled when they had first evacuated to Crimea.
At the end of June, the command of the 13th Army directed a cavalry corps under the command of Dmitry Zhloba against the 1st Army Corps, tasking it with cutting off the White forces participating in the operation from Crimea. But Zhloba's poor leadership allowed the Whites to achieve a decisive victory; in the area of Tokmak and the German settlements of Lindenau and Heidelberg, Zhloba's forces were completely destroyed. In July 1920, Wrangel decided to only send two small units to Pryazovia. The first group of 1,000 people landed east of Mariupol and briefly took the Nikolaevskaya riverside hostel before being defeated by the Reds. The second group of 800 people managed to recruit a further 700 volunteers, and for several weeks conducted guerrilla warfare against the Bolsheviks, ultimately failing.
Kakhovka Bridgehead
On 7 August 1920, units of the 13th Army commanded by Roberts Eidemanis crossed the Dnieper near the village of Kakhovka, to create a bridgehead on the left bank of the river, stop the expected further White offensive actions, and then force them to fall back to Crimea.
After the victory of the Polish troops in Battle of Warsaw and the retreat of the Red Army from Poland, the situation on the Southern Front completely changed to the detriment of the Whites. The break-up of white forces in North Taurida and Crimea became one of the main goals of the Bolshevik government, along with the conclusion of a peace treaty with Poland. On 19 August 1920, the Bolshevik Politburo identified the front of the fight against Wrangel as their main threat. Meanwhile, in the first half of September, Slashchov's 2nd Army Corps managed to move along the northern coast of the Sea of Azov and, on 15 September, it captured Mariupol.