More than 30,000 Russian troops have crossed into the left bank of the Dnieper River, which divides the Kherson region of southern Ukraine, the defense ministry in Moscow announced on Friday.
“In total, more than 30,000 Russian military personnel and nearly 5,000 units of weapons and military vehicles were withdrawn” from the west bank of the river, the Russian ministry said, quoted by France’s AFP and Spain’s EFE agencies.
The ministry added that his troops left nothing behind, not even damaged cars and equipment.
The operation was the result of the advance of Ukrainian troops, which this Friday entered the city of Kherson, the capital of the region of the same name.
Russia cited the numerical superiority of the enemy to justify the withdrawal.
He also said it was due to the need to send part of this contingent to other parts of the front, the Donbass (Donetsk and Lugansk, in the east) or Zaporijia (southeast).
Kherson, Zaporijia, Donetsk and Lugansk are the four Ukrainian regions annexed by Russia on September 30, in a decision widely regarded as illegitimate by Kiev and the international community at large.
The city of Kherson, taken by Russian forces a few days after the invasion (February 24), was the only Ukrainian regional capital to be captured by Russia in nearly nine months of war.
In early September, Kiev launched a surprise attack on the Kharkiv region (northeast) and has since claimed the recapture of key logistics centers such as Izium, Kupiansk and Lyman (east).
The withdrawal was announced on Wednesday by Russia’s commander in Ukraine, General Serguei Surovikin, and is regarded as the biggest defeat since the start of the military offensive in the neighboring country.
The setback is all the more significant as it comes less than two months after Russian leader Vladimir Putin ordered the deployment of 300,000 reservists to consolidate struggling troops in the face of Ukraine’s counter-offensive.
Kherson’s withdrawal was supported by figures highly critical of the Russian military’s strategy in Ukraine, such as Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, but poorly received by pundits close to the Kremlin (presidency).
“The surrender of Kherson is Russia’s biggest geopolitical defeat since the collapse of the Soviet Union,” said Serguei Markov, a former adviser to Putin, quoted by the Spanish agencies EFE and the US AP.
Despite the withdrawal, the Kremlin said Friday that Kherson remains a region of the Russian Federation.
“It is a matter for the Russian Federation. That cannot be changed”said presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Announcing the reservist mobilization, Putin warned that Russia would use all means to defend its territorial integrity, citing the possibility of using nuclear weapons.
From Moscow’s perspective, the four now-annexed regions and the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed in 2014, are part of the territory of the Russian Federation.
Source: DN
