This announcement comes as the Ukrainian army continues its counter-offensive in this region of southern Ukraine. kyiv denounces for its part a staging.
The Russian Minister of Defense on Wednesday (November 9th) ordered the withdrawal of Russian forces from the right bank of the Dnieper River in the Ukrainian region of Kherson, which includes the regional capital of the same name, the target of a vast Ukrainian counter-offensive. “Proceed with the withdrawal of the soldiers“, Sergei Shoigu told television, after a proposal to this effect from the commander of Russian operations in Ukraine, General Sergei Surovikin, who recognized that it was a decision “not at all easy” to take.
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“The withdrawal maneuvers of the soldiers will begin very quickly“, assured the general. This withdrawal constitutes a new stinging setback for the Kremlin, Kherson having been the main Russian hold, after the conquest of the city in the first days of the offensive against Ukraine. It is the only regional capital that Moscow has been able to claim conquest. According to General Sourovikine, Russia is going to reorganize its line on the other bank of the Dnieper, a natural barrier which flows south of the city of Kherson.
kyiv castigates a staging
For its part, kyiv said it does not see “no signat this stage of withdrawal of Russian forces from Kherson. “We see no sign that Russia is leaving Kherson without a fight. Part of the Russian (troops) is kept in the cityfrom the south of Ukraine, declared an adviser to the presidency, Mykhaïlo Podoliak, lambastingstaged television statementsfrom Moscow. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday evening that his country was reacting with a “extreme caution” at the announcement of this withdrawal. “The enemy does not give us a present, does not show a ‘gesture of good will’, we must win everything”he said in his daily message to Ukrainians. “We must therefore exercise extreme caution, without emotions, without taking unnecessary risks, in order to liberate all of our land with as minimal losses as possible.”
This announced decline comes on top of that of the Kharkiv region in September. It comes just over a month after Vladimir Putin claimed the annexation of the Kherson region and three other Ukrainian regions. Moscow considers all of these areas as its sovereign territory. The Kherson region is all the more strategic as its territory borders Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
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General Surovikin justified the need for the withdrawal by his desire to protect the lives of Russian soldiers, and accused Ukrainian forces of bombing civilians. Before proposing this withdrawal from Kherson, the officer had nevertheless affirmed that his troops were successfully repelling the Ukrainian attacks, inflicting considerable losses on them. “We successfully resist the attempted assaults of the adversary“, he assured, claiming to have killed or wounded 9500 Ukrainian soldiers and maintaining that the Russian losses were seven or eight times less.
“We think first of all about the life of every Russian soldier“, he said. For several weeks, Russia had been carrying out the “evacuationof civilians from the right bank of the Dnieper, transfers of population qualified asdeportationsby Kyiv. According to General Sourovikine, some 115,000 people thus joined the left bank (to the east) of the river. Before launching its ground offensive in the north of the Kherson region at the end of the summer, the Ukrainian forces had disabled key bridges for supplying the Russian forces, in particular thanks to the armaments delivered by the West. , especially the American Himars.
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