Retreat of 100 Thousand Russian Troops from Kherson Ukraine: A Hidden Strategy or a Real Defeat

Ukrainian troops moved the Russian faction to the river pier south of Kherson.

This happened after Russia ordered its troops to leave Kherson.

Quoted from Reuters, some Ukrainian officials are still worried that Russian troops can turn Kherson into a city of death.

Just as they predicted, the Russians will have at least 1 week to withdraw.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov explained that Russia still has a team of 40,000 troops in the Kherson area and intelligence shows its troops still remain in the city, around the city and on the western edge of the vast Dnipro River.

"It is not easy to withdraw these troops from Kherson in one or 2 days. Minimum 1 week," Reznikov said.

A withdrawal at Kherson would release troops from both sides and have the potential to fight elsewhere.

The Russian army under General Sergei Surovikin appears to have become more disciplined and violent since his appointment as the new commander of the Russian aggression force in October, Reznikov said.

Russia initially announced it would withdraw from the western edge of Dnipro which includes the city of Kherson, one of the regional capitals it has taken since invading Ukraine in February.

Western military and diplomatic sources cautioned that the Russian military's manner does not mean they lost or a major victory for Ukraine.

It's a turning point, but it doesn't mean if Russia has lost or Ukraine has won, said Ben Barry, a senior associate for ground warfare at the International Institute for Vital Studies in London. Russia is capable of a new offensive or counterattack.

Ukrainian Top Brass React cautiously

The withdrawal of Russian troops from Kherson in southern Ukraine on Wednesday (9/11/2022) identified the latest heavy blow to its operations amid Ukraine's retaliatory onslaught.

Some bigwigs in Kyiv reacted cautiously, and explained the Russian army was unlikely to leave the vital city without a fight.

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Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden said the troop withdrawal was proof that Moscow had "real problems" on the battlefield.

"Start taking troops," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in a face-to-face televised with Russian commander in Ukraine, Sergei Surovikin as quoted by AFP on Wednesday (9/11/2022).

The instruction ordered a "difficult decision" to withdraw from the city and establish defenses on the eastern banks of the Dnipro River.

The city of Kherson was the first urban center taken by Russia during a "special military operation," and one of the regional capitals controlled by Moscow forces since the onslaught into Ukraine began on February 24.

Ukrainian forces throughout the weeks were already seizing villages, driving operations into cities near the Black Sea.

In that regard, some of the leaders the Kremlin has placed in Kherson have pulled out civil society.

In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky explained his troops "moved absolutely cautiously, without emotion, without unnecessary risk, to release all our land and to lose as little as possible."

"The opponent didn't give us a prize, didn't make a 'gesture of goodwill', we won all," Zelensky said in a colloquial speech to the nation.

According to him, every Ukrainian gain comes at the risk of "the lives lost by our heroes."

Presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak explained some Russian soldiers still remain in the city.

"We are not witnessing any signs that Russia will leave Kherson without a fight," he said on Twitter.

Some Ukrainian civil society is skeptical. "The Russian leadership plays a thing, you don't trust them... I think they're planning a thing. We have to wait for what our legitimate sources say," Andriy Orikhovskyi, a financier (46 years old), explained to AFP in Kyiv.

Bitter option

In Moscow, Kremlin sympathizers immediately corrected the decision.

The head of the Russian state media RT, Margarita Simonyan, explained that troops were needed so as not to let Russian troops be plastered on the western edge of the Dnipro River and "open the way to Crimea".

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Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov described the decision as "difficult but fair".

Putin's ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, who called the founder of wagner's mercenary ranks and already a crisis on Russian military tactics in the campaign, is more problematic in his confession.

"It is important not to be persecuted, not to be convoluted in paranoia, but to draw summaries and correct errors," his press service noted on social media.

The release of the Kherson area from Russia will restore Ukraine important access to the Sea of Azov, and a slight side left for President Vladimir Putin shows the success of a military operation that has replaced it with a pariah in Western eyes.

The withdrawal of Russian troops will put emphasis on its control over the remaining areas it annexed, which makes a land bridge from Russia to Crimea, a peninsula moscow annexed in 2014.

Kherson is of 4 Ukrainian regions based on Putin's recognition it was annexed in September.

The unilateral recognition came shortly after his forces were forced to withdraw from swaths of territory in the northeastern Kharkiv area.

The current backwards information comes just moments after some high-ranking officials explained Moscow's confirmed deputy head of the Kherson region, Kirill Stremousov, a special sympathizer for annexation, died in a car accident.

As Ukrainian forces gradually advanced in the south, Surovikin explained to Shoigu on Wednesday (9/11/2022), that about 115,000 people had been moved from the western edge of Dnipro, which includes the city of Kherson.

Ukraine has already described this movement of citizens towards Russia or russian-occupied areas as "deportations."