The Russian army retreated Tuesday in the region of Kharkiv (northeast), but also of Kherson (south), according to maps presented by the Russian Ministry of Defense, illustrating the latest successes of the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the territories annexed by Moscow.
These maps, compared with the one from the previous day, show that the Russian forces have left a large number of localities in the Kherson region, including Dudchany, on the western bank of the Dnieper River, while the Ukrainian army is conducting a counter-attack there. offensive which has struggled to break through until now.
The map of the Kharkiv region (northeast) shows that the Russians have left almost all of the eastern bank of the Oskil River, the last area of the region they still controlled.
However, the Russian army has not announced a withdrawal or commented on this visible decline on the maps.
The Russian occupation authorities in southern Ukraine have called for their side not to “panic”, despite a series of bitter setbacks.
The head of the Russian occupation in Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, was the first to admit a Ukrainian “breakthrough” and in particular the loss of the village of Dudtchany, before assuring that the Russian air force had “stopped” the Ukrainian advance, in a Monday afternoon interview posted on his Telegram page on Tuesday.
According to Western and Ukrainian estimates, some 20,000 Russian soldiers are stationed in this area.
Ukrainian forces have concentrated fire in recent weeks on Russian positions and warehouses on the right bank of the Dnieper, as well as on the bridges spanning this river in order to cut off Russian supply lines.
75 km northeast of Kherson, along the Dnieper, Nastassia Proudkune, 75, saw the Ukrainian army last week “pounding daily” the Kakhovka dam between the two banks controlled by Moscow.
The Russians “built a pontoon on the water, but the Ukrainians touched it twice and destroyed it”, she told AFP by telephone, suggesting a difficult withdrawal of Russian troops, cut in half by the Dnieper.
Ukrainian flags
However, kyiv is still silent on its progress in the south of the country.
” [Les Russes] abandon their positions and withdraw to a safe distance, destroy their ammunition stocks, try to destroy the bridges,” the Ukrainian General Staff simply wrote on Facebook.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, limited himself to saying in his evening speech on Monday that “new localities have been liberated in several regions”.
In addition, for several days, videos of Ukrainian soldiers raising their flag in villages in the northern Kherson region have multiplied online.
The chief of staff of the Ukrainian presidency, Andriï Iermak, posted a message of emoticons on Telegram showing Ukrainian flags and a watermelon, a fruit of which the Kherson region is a major producer.
Russian troops captured Kherson, on the Dnipro River, at the start of the invasion of Ukraine. It is the only regional capital that they have succeeded in conquering.
After a series of crushing defeats in northern and eastern Ukraine, Russia decided to annex the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhya, which it controls at least in part, and decreed a mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists.
But two days after the annexation ceremony, President Zelensky announced the takeover of Lyman, a strategic railway hub in eastern Ukraine, inflicting a new snub on Moscow.
The UN General Assembly will also meet on Monday to examine a resolution currently in preparation concerning these annexations.
The mobilization of reservists in Russia has also been chaotic, with the military coming under fire for calling up many reservists who should have been exempted for health or family reasons.
New American rocket launchers
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that since the September 21 mobilization order, more than 200,000 people had joined the army.
“The training of personnel [nouvelles] trained units is carried out at 80 military fields and six training centers,” he added.
The prospect of being sent to the front, however, also caused an exodus of tens of thousands of Russians, who left the country in particular for Georgia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Finland.
In Russia, the organization of imprisoned opponent Alexei Navalny has announced that it will reopen its regional offices to fight “against war and mobilization”, despite possible legal reprisals.
For their part, the Westerners have sworn that they will continue to support kyiv, in particular with modern arms and ammunition.
Joe Biden spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, on Tuesday, according to the White House which then announced $625 million in additional military aid to Ukraine.
This shipment will include in particular new Himars for the Ukrainian army. These highly accurate and powerful rocket launcher systems have played an important role in recent Ukrainian military advances.
The UN, for its part, estimated that the annexation of Ukrainian territories by Russia would only “exacerbate” the human rights violations committed by Moscow.
The consequences for the Ukrainian economy are also considerable: GDP is expected to contract by 35% in 2022 according to a new World Bank forecast.
The President of the Ukrainian Central Bank, Kyrylo Shevchenko, has also announced his resignation for “health” reasons.