Photo: SERGEY BOBOK / AFP / Getty Images
The Ukrainian forces have retaken partial control of the key port city of Kherson, the Pentagon said
on Friday, as the Kremlin seemed forced to change strategy after failing to capture kyiv.
“Kherson is disputed territory again,” said a senior US defense official, stating that Russian forces no longer control the area and that the Ukrainians continue to fight fiercely there.
Kherson, located at the mouth of the Dnieper River that divides Ukraine and is directly north of the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula in 1200, was the first and only major population center that Russian forces took since the beginning of the invasion.
The city has been the scene of regular protests against Russian forces, which disperse protesters were shot with live bullets earlier this week.
The Kremlin denied losing control of the city and Russian Colonel-General Sergey Rudskoy claimed on Friday that “Kherson and most of the Zaporozhye region are under full control,” according to the state-run media outlet Sputnik.
But Rudskoy added that Russia is now considering limiting its invasion, which Rudskoy called a “special operation,” to the Donbas region in the east, where Kremlin-backed separatists have been fighting Ukraine since 2014.
“The combat potential of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has been reduced considerably, which makes it possible to concentrate our core efforts on achieving the main goal, the liberation of Donbas,” Rudskoy said in a speech on Friday, ignoring reports of Ukrainian victories and Russian losses.
“Our forcesand resources will be concentrated on the main thing: the complete liberation of Donbas”, he said.
The Pentagon acknowledged Russia’s change of course on Friday.
“This is a relatively new decision by the Russians,” said a senior US defense official.
The senior US official said that Russia is trying to move reinforcements from the former Soviet state of Georgia to supplement its forces in Ukraine.
The official added that there were no signs of that Belarus, a Kremlin ally that was used as a base for Russian President Putin’s forces in the early days of the invasion, would send troops to Ukraine.
The Ukrainian advance on Kherson comes after successful Ukrainian counterattacks on the North also retake a handful of kyiv suburbs and disrupt lines of crucial supplies for the Russian military strategy against the Ukrainian capital.
“Clearly, they overestimated their ability to take kyiv… to take any population center” , the senior defense official said about the Russians.
Ukrainian forces also destroyed a large Russian landing ship on Thursday in the port city of Berdyansk, which reportedly disrupted Moscow’s efforts to resupply its troops.
As Russian morale continues to sink, a Russian brigade commander was deliberately killed by his own troops after his unit suffered massive losses in Ukraine, a Western official said Friday.
Reportedly, it is “Colonel Medvechek, commander of the 37th Motorized Rifle Brigade”, the officer could probably be the same superior who was run over by a tank under his command and wounded on Thursday.
Read more
Russia backs down in kyiv and the Kremlin claims that it will focus only on “liberating” the breakaway region of Donbas
The ‘Butcher of Mariúpol’, a Russian colonel who ordered the soldier’s ears to be cut off for wearing the wrong uniform, according to intercepted audioUkraine expels Russian troops from kyiv as a sign that the resistance is defeating Putin’s forces