Ukrainian soldiers dismantle an artillery piece abandoned by the Russians after their withdrawal. /
The Kremlin establishes a containment line on the left bank of the Dnieper River to stop the bleeding of casualties caused by this week’s strong Ukrainian offensive
After the report presented by the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army in Ukraine, General Sergei Surovikin, detailing the difficulties that the troops have to face, first of all supplies of supplies and logistics, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, on Wednesday gave an order to withdraw the forces of the entire part of Kherson located north of the Dnieper River, the territories of the right bank, which includes the city that bears the same name, and to withdraw towards the left bank. to better defend the area and prevent the Ukrainian advance towards Crimea.
The images of the military meeting were broadcast by the main Russian television channels. “Comprehensively assessing the current situation, we propose to organize defense along the left bank of the Dnieper River. I understand that it is a very difficult decision, but at the same time we will preserve the most important thing, the life of our military and combat capacity,” Surovikin told Shoigu.
In his words, there was “an additional threat to the civilian population and the complete isolation of the group of troops on the right bank of the Dnieper” and added that “part of the forces and means that will be used for active operations, including offensive ones, will be released.” , in other directions of the area».
To which, after the general’s intervention, Shoigu said he “agrees with his conclusions and suggestions. The head of the command in Ukraine spoke of the destruction of bridges over the Dnieper by the kyiv forces and the supply difficulties resulting from it.
Shortly before Surovikin’s speech, news began to arrive of a new Ukrainian counter-offensive in the Snigirevka area, in the neighboring Mykolaiv region north of Kherson. The blowing up of more bridges on the Dnieper and the possibility, according to Surovikin, that the kyiv Army decides to cause a flood in the Kajovka dam were also reported. Coinciding with the withdrawal, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, decreed the creation of four military administrations in Kherson.
On Monday, fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces was especially fierce around the city of Kajovka, on the left bank of the Dnieper. From that side, the Ukrainian Army threatens to continue its advance towards Crimea. The need to reinforce that part of the front explains Shoigu’s decision to abandon the right bank in order to have more troops.
The kyiv General Staff claimed in its daily report to have killed 200 Russian soldiers who were barricaded in a building in Kajovka and destroyed a column of Russian military equipment. On the same day, the Air Force would have attacked the enemy in the same locality on up to 18 occasions, of which 17 would have affected areas where personnel, weapons and military equipment were concentrated, as well as the position of the occupants’ air defense launchers. .
mysterious death
This Wednesday also learned of the death, apparently in a traffic accident, of the deputy head of the Kherson Occupation Administration, Kirill Stremoúsov, who last week was making contradictory announcements about the withdrawal of troops and the evacuation of civilians. He first said that the withdrawal was imminent so that the next day he would ensure that Moscow would not hand over the city of Kherson without a fight.
The rumor mill about whether or not Stremoúsov was murdered, about whether the accident with the vehicle in which he was traveling was caused, spread throughout the day. Assertions from the time the Ukrainians killed him to the fact that the Russian secret services would have liquidated him for being against the surrender of Kherson.
The region, including its administrative capital, the only one in all of Ukraine that Russian troops managed to seize after the start of the war, on February 24, since the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk fell to the separatists in 2014, it was the first to be occupied at the beginning of March.