In a monumental setback for Russia in the war in Ukraine, the Russian military announced Wednesday their withdrawal from the annexed Ukrainian city of Kherson, the only regional capital under Russian control in the entire country.
“Proceed with the withdrawal of the troops and take all necessary measures to ensure the safe transfer of troops, weapons and equipment to the other bank of the Dnieper River,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered the head of the Russian forces grouping. fight in Ukraine, General Sergei Surovikin.
Shoigu approved the withdrawal after Surovikin admitted in his report that the defense of the city and its suburbs on the right bank of the Dnieper it’s impossible”.
The general emphasized this in the current conditions furthermore it is not possible to provide to the Russian military contingent deployed in the area.
Surovikin, who took command of all Russian troops in Ukraine in early October, accused the enemy army of bbomb civilian targetsfrom schools to hospitals.
“It is not an easy decision,” he acknowledged, although he stressed that the priority for Moscow is protect civil life and military.
He estimated that more than 115,000 inhabitants of the region’s right bank have been evacuated from the combat zones.
“We must take into account the threat to the civilian population,” said Shoigú, whose country has been accused of war crimes for attack the Ukrainian civilian population.
Surovikin pointed out that some 9,500 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded since August in the region bordering the Crimean peninsula, when the Ukrainian armed forces launched a counter-offensive in Kherson.
Russia, which in the past two months has ceded the territories of Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, and which has also withdrawn from the eastern region of Kharkov, annexed the Kherson region on September 30, as well as those of Donetsk, Lugansk and Zaporizhia, without controlling them in their entirety.
The withdrawal is a major setback for President Vladimir Putin.
EFE
Source: Clarin
