Moscow (AP) – Russian forces said Wednesday they would withdraw from the only Ukrainian provincial capital it seized which, in what would be one of the most significant and humiliating setbacks for Moscow’s forces in the 8-month-old war. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Russia is disguising its withdrawal from Kherson to lure Ukrainian forces into a determined battle in the strategic industrial port city.
The withdrawal from Kherson, the eponymous region illegally annexed to Moscow earlier this year, marks an early unsuccessful attempt to capture the capital Kyiv and chaos from the administrative districts around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city.
Russian forces occupied Kherson, consisting pre-war population of 280,000, at the start of the invasion, which began on February 24.
As part of a larger counteroffensive in eastern and southern Ukraine, in recent weeks Kyiv’s forces have concentrated in the city, cutting off supply lines and driving Russian forces out of much of the territory.
Recapturing Kherson would allow Ukraine to regain lost territory in the Zaporizhzhia region and other southern regions, and could ultimately lead to her being pushed back into Crimea, which Russia illegally occupied in 2014. A Russian withdrawal will almost certainly increase domestic pressure on the Kremlin and escalate the conflict.
The Supreme Military Commander of Moscow, told Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu on Wednesday that it was impossible to supply the city of Kherson and its defense would be “meaningless”.
Against this backdrop, reports surfaced on Wednesday that a second official of the Moscow-based Kherson regional government had died in a car accident. There was no evidence of wrongdoing.
Russian forces appear to have been preparing for an orderly withdrawal from Kherson months in advance, as opposed to an indiscriminate withdrawal from the Kharkiv region when invading forces left large amounts of weapons and ammunition. In October, Slovikin appeared to set the course for a possible withdrawal from Kherson, acknowledging that the situation for Moscow was “pretty difficult”.
The body of Grigory his Potemkin, the Russian general who built Kherson in the 18th century, was reportedly removed from the city’s St. Catherine’s Church.
In recent months, Ukraine has used her US-provided HIMARS missile launchers to attack a key bridge on the Dnieper River in Kherson.
Russia wanted Kherson so it could press an offensive to other areas and sever Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea.
It would hurt Ukraine’s economy and allow Moscow to build a land corridor to the separatist region of Transnistria in Moldova, home to a large Russian military base.
The president’s office said a widespread Russian attack on Ukraine’s power system continues. Not far from Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, he said two cities were bombarded overnight. More than 20 homes, industrial plants, gas pipelines and power lines were reportedly damaged in Nikopol, across the Dnieper from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Farther west in the Dnipropetrovsk region, the Ukrainian governor reported a ‘major’ night strike involving the explosion of an Iranian-made drone, injuring four workers of an energy company in the city of Dnipro.
