Russia orders to withdraw its troops from the city of Kherson

The Russian Army announced on Wednesday its withdrawal from the annexed Ukrainian city of Khersonthe 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,” ordered the Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoiguto the head of the group of Russian forces fighting in Ukraine, General Sergei Surovikin.

As EL ESPAÑOL advanced, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, entrenched himself in Kherson – a city that he had conquered since March 1, the beginning of the “special military operation” – to draw his new line of defense.

Surovikin, who assumed command of all Kremlin troops in occupied territory in early October, admitted that the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson had created a “difficult” situation in the region, showing a strange weakness of Russian troops in a region that , not long ago, annexed through illegal referendums.

“It’s 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 region’s right bank have been evacuated from the combat zones.

[Putin declara la ley marcial en las regiones anexionadas mientras evacúa la ciudad de Jersón]

The Kremlin’s withdrawal from a key region like Kherson coincides with the death of the pro-Russian deputy governor of the region, Kiril Stremousov. The cause was a car accident, as reported by the Russian agency TASS.

Stremousov, 45, was the main spokesman for the pro-Russian authorities in Kherson and published daily information about the situation on that front on his Telegram channel.

The official’s last entry on the social network dates from this morning. In the message, Stremoúsov says that Russian troops repelled a Ukrainian attack on Kherson, despite the fact that kyiv is concentrating more and more military forces in the region.

The Russians now move the front line closer to Crimeathe peninsula legally annexed in 2014 that Putin has always considered a red line that cannot be crossed. Just remember how after the partial blowing up of the Kerch bridge on October 8, Moscow began indiscriminately attacking civilian targets in dozens of Ukrainian cities.

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 began the counteroffensive in Kherson.

goodbye to the flags

Russian flags continue to disappear from administrative buildings in the Ukrainian city of Khersonannexed by Russia last September, while uncertainty persists about the next movements of Russian and Ukrainian troops around the city.

“Russian flags disappear from Kherson administrative buildings”the war correspondent of the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alexandr Kots, wrote in his Telegram.

The reporter, who has more than 680,000 followers on his channel, published two videos of official buildings without a flag, one of which is the Naval Academy in Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine.

The Russian-imposed authorities in Kherson ordered in October the evacuation in the region of some 80,000 citizens from the right bank to the left bank of the Dnieper River in the face of the approach of the Ukrainian forces.