Images of intense joy in the midst of a war that has already caused tens of thousands of deaths and massive destruction, the scenes of jubilation, the flowers offered by the inhabitants of Kherson to the Ukrainian soldiers who liberated the city, Friday, November 11 , after nearly nine months of Russian occupation, are cause for celebration. Not only because the Russian withdrawal was carried out without chaos or civilian casualties, but also because the fall of Kherson constitutes a turning point in the war of aggression launched on February 24 by Vladimir Putin against his neighbour.
Recall that, on September 30, the Russian President proclaimed Kherson “Russian forever” during its illegal annexation gives the measure of the immense military and political setback that the forced withdrawal of this city, the only capital of a region (oblast) taken by Moscow in March, represents for Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Result of the pressure exerted by the Ukrainian forces, this military defeat is so flagrant that it forced the head of the Kremlin to adopt his attitude of the days of bad news: total silence. The time seems long gone when Mr. Putin threatened nuclear reprisals in the event of a Ukrainian advance on territories he considers Russian. kyiv reconquers its territory without taking into account the intimidations and the word of the Russian president is weakened.
Decisive, the liberation of Kherson changes the face of the conflict: Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014 and long perceived as difficult to take back, becomes again exposed to the counter-offensive of the Ukrainians. The canal that supplies the peninsula with water is now only 5 kilometers from their guns, as is the railway line that supplies the Russian forces. The approaching winter is certainly a heavy prospect for the soldiers of Kiev, but it is even more so for the Russians, who have less precise weapons and whose supplies are more uncertain.
All diplomatic exits closed
The Russian retreat to Kherson makes the prospect of a Russian defeat less and less hypothetical and seems to put off for the moment that of open negotiations. While voices in the United States began to multiply criticizing the cost of military support for Ukraine and calling on kyiv to moderate its demands, Ukrainian advances on the ground underline, on the contrary, the imperative need for continued decisive support. western states. The maintenance of a Democratic majority in the United States Senate following the midterm elections and the homage, by the White House, to the“extraordinary victory” of Kherson go in this direction.
If we consider that the fate of Vladimir Putin is linked to the fate of arms in Ukraine after he closed all diplomatic outlets, the events in Kherson may also constitute a political “turning point” in Russia. In this respect, the decision of Evgueni Prigojine, leader of the Wagner mercenaries and close to the Russian President, to allow the staging, by a video broadcast on the Internet, of the atrocious execution of one of his men, accused of desertion in Ukraine, underlines the risk of a spiral of savagery in the conflict. The odious exploitation of this war crime, one of the many already committed on Ukrainian soil, only reinforces the need to mobilize all the weapons of international law to prepare to judge the perpetrators.