Moscow has ordered its troops to withdraw from Kherson, but Kyiv remains wary and says the Russians will not go down without a fight
A month after Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Kherson and declared it part of Russia forever, Moscow ordered its troops to withdraw from the region, in one of its biggest setbacks so far in its war in Ukraine.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced yesterday, Wednesday, that Russian forces will withdraw from the western bank of the Dnieper River, to save the lives of Russian soldiers and to better defend positions on the other side of the river.
However, Kyiv doubts that Russian troops will leave the strategically important city without a fight.
The adviser of the Ukrainian president Mykhailo Podoliak said today that Russia was turning Kherson into a “city of death” and accused Moscow of mining everything there, from apartments to sewers, and of planning to bomb Kherson from across the Dnieper.
“The ‘Russian world’ is just that: I saw, stole, celebrated, killed ‘witnesses’, left ruins and left,” Podoliak wrote on Twitter.
The Russians are “leaving, but not as much as if they were fully withdrawing or regrouping,” says Oleksii Arestovich, advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky in a video posted on the Internet yesterday, Wednesday night.
Russian forces are destroying bridges as they withdraw and laying mines on roads, Arestovich said.
“At present, we do not know their intentions – will they engage in fighting with us and try to hold the city of Kherson? They move very slowly,” he said.
He himself Zelensky he mentioned Kherson only once during his televised speech during the night. Ukrainian forces are strengthening their positions “step by step” in the south and “o enemy will not give us gifts“, he emphasized.
Russian-appointed officials have removed tens of thousands of civilians from Kherson in recent weeks. Kyiv says forced displacements took place, which constitutes a war crime.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US armed forces, General Mark Miley, said that according to the first indications, Russia is proceeding with a withdrawal from Kherson, although it may take time to complete it.
US President Joe Biden said that this withdrawal shows that there are “some real problems with the Russian armed forces”.
The moral
The announcement of the withdrawal from Kherson in the south follows Russia’s defeat in the north and parts of eastern Ukraine, leaving Moscow with only limited gains from its war.
Russian forces still hold some of the territory they seized in the south, including a land route linking Russia with the Crimean peninsula it seized in 2014, as well as some towns in the east, which have been largely destroyed during the occupation their.
For Ukraine, which has endured nine months of bombing and an occupation that has claimed the lives of thousands of its civilians, a victory in Kherson strengthens its position that it can defeat Russia on the battlefield and may silence some voices that they are calling on her to negotiate an agreement whereby she would cede land.
The withdrawal could put hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians out of Russian territory, while hundreds of thousands more, in areas like neighboring Mykolayiv, would no longer be within range of Russian artillery pounding civilian homes.
Ukraine could also find itself in a further advantageous position.
“By taking control of the entire west bank of the Dnieper, Ukrainian forces will now be able to target with artillery all Russian ammunition depots, as well as command and control centers between the Dnieper and Crimea,” says Dale Buckner, the company’s chief executive. international security Global Guardian.
Retired US General Mark Hertling, former commander of US ground forces in Europe, tweeted that this was a further blow to Russian morale and would boost the morale of Ukrainian troops.
Ukrainian military analyst Yury Butusov said the Ukrainian military’s use of US-supplied HIMARS rocket systems had made the river crossings so dangerous that “the defense of Russian positions there has become impossible.”
“But let’s be clear. Russian forces will take up defensive positions and will be able to launch new attacks. They will be able to hold their positions on the east bank for some time,” Yuri Butusov says in a YouTube video.
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