The Russian Army today announced its withdrawal from the annexed Ukrainian city of Kherson, the only regional capital under Russian control in the entire country.
“Proceed with the withdrawal of troops and take all necessary measures to ensure the safe transfer of troops, weapons and equipment to the other side of the Dnieper River,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered the head of the group of Russian forces fighting in Ukraine, General Sergei Surovikin.
Shoigu approved the withdrawal after Surovikin admitted in his report that the defense of the city and its outskirts on the right bank of the Dnieper is “unfeasible.”
The general stressed that under current conditions it is also not possible to supply the Russian military contingent deployed in the area.
Surovikin, who assumed command of all Russian troops in Ukraine in early October, accused the enemy army of bombing civilian targets, from schools to hospitals.
“It is not an easy decision,” he acknowledged, although he stressed that the priority for Moscow is to protect the lives of civilians and soldiers.
He estimated that more than 115,000 inhabitants of the right bank of the region have been evacuated from the combat zones.
“We must take into account the threat to the civilian population,” Shoigu stressed.
Surovikin stressed that some 9,500 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded since August in the region bordering the Crimean peninsula, the date on which the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched the counteroffensive in Kherson.
Russia, which in the last two months has ceded territories in Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, and which has also withdrawn from the eastern region of Kharkov, annexed the Kherson region on September 30, as well as those of Donetsk, Lugansk and Zaporizhia, without controlling them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.
