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Russia’s military announced Wednesday that it’s withdrawing from a key Ukrainian city and nearby areas, in what would be one of the most significant and humiliating setbacks for Moscow’s forces in the 8-month-old war.
Ukrainian authorities, however, cautioned against considering the retreat a done deal. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that the Russians were feigning a pullout from Kherson to lure the Ukrainian army into an entrenched battle in the strategic industrial port city.
The withdrawal from Kherson in a region of the same name that Moscow illegally annexed earlier this year would pile on another setback after Russia’s early failed attempt to capture the capital, Kyiv. Kherson, with a prewar population of 280,000, is the only regional capital Russian forces captured since the Feb. 24 invasion began.
Kyiv’s forces have zeroed in on the city and cut off supply lines in recent weeks as part of a larger counteroffensive in eastern and southern Ukraine that has pushed Russian troops out of wide swaths of territory.
Recapturing Kherson could allow Ukraine to win back lost territory in the Zaporizhzhia region and other southern areas, leading to an eventual push back into Crimea, which Russia illegally seized in 2014. A Russian retreat is almost certain to raise domestic pressure on the Kremlin to escalate the conflict.
Speaking in a stern tone and with a steely face on Russian TV, Moscow’s top military commander in Ukraine reported to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday that it was impossible to supply the city of Kherson and that its defense would be futile.
Gen. Sergei Surovikin said that 115,000 people had been relocated because their lives are constantly in danger, and proposed a retreat to the opposite bank of the Dnieper River from where Kherson lies.
Shoigu agreed with Surovikin’s assessment and ordered him to start with the withdrawal of troops and take all measures to ensure the safe transfer of personnel, weapons and equipment across the Dnieper River.
