Russia Says It's Withdrawing Troops From Key Ukrainian City
Newsy
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that the Russians were feigning a pullout from Kherson to lure the Ukrainian army into an entrenched battle.
Russia's military announced Wednesday that it's withdrawing from the only Ukrainian regional capital it's captured, in what would be one of the most significant and humiliating setbacks for Moscow's forces in the 8-month-old war.
Ukrainian authorities, however, cautioned against considering the retreat from Kherson, a gateway to the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula, and nearby areas a done deal. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that the Russians were feigning a pullout from Kherson to lure the Ukrainian army into an entrenched battle in the strategic industrial port city.
The withdrawal from Kherson — in a region of the same name that Moscow illegally annexed earlier this year — would pile on another setback after Russia's early failed attempt to capture the capital, Kyiv, and the chaotic and hasty retreat from the administrative region around Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, which itself never fell to the Russians. Russian forces captured Kherson, with a prewar population of 280,000, early in the invasion, which began Feb. 24.
