Kiev and the Day of the War: Is Today a historic day? Vladimir Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, is going back to Kherson
The borders of the areas Moscow is claiming are not clear and Putin has vowed to defend Russia’s territory with nuclear weapons.
The Ukrainian army said in an announcement that they were facing off against the Russian army around the cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka in the eastern region of the country. The General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces didn’t acknowledge any loss of territory, but said there had been a lot of tension around those two cities.
Putin, however, attempted to claim that the referendums reflected the will of “millions” of people, despite reports from the ground suggesting that voting took place essentially – and in some cases, literally – at gunpoint.
Volodymyr Zelensky, president of the Ukrainians, said in a message that is posted on the Telegram messaging app that Today is a historic day. We are going back to Kherson. Our defenders are on the city approaches. There are special units in the city.
The president of Russia thinks the annexation is an attempt to fix a mistake he believes was made after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Putin said he wanted to restore Russia as a global power to protect the Russian speaking world against the continued threat posed by Western forces.
Russia will now, despite the widespread international condemnation, forge ahead with its plans to fly its flag over some 100,000 square kilometers (38,600 square miles) of Ukrainian territory – the largest forcible annexation of land in Europe since 1945.
Russia has suffered a series of setbacks nearly eight months after invading Ukraine in a campaign many thought would be short-lived. In recent weeks, Ukrainian forces have staged a counteroffensive, retaking areas in the south and east, while Moscow’s decision to call up more troops has led to protests and an exodus of tens of thousands of Russians.
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces on Sunday hunted Russian stragglers in the key city of Lyman, which was taken back from Russia after its demoralized troops, according to a major Russian newspaper, fled with “empty eyes,” and despite Moscow’s baseless claim it had annexed the region surrounding the city.
But with the ability to target major Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Russia has shown that it can still cause immense damage and dislocation. The conflict between Russia andUkraine is one of the most dangerous phases in recent years. Tensions were already high from Putin’s earlier statements suggesting that tactical nuclear weapons remain on the table.
Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of Chechnya, said the retreat was the result of a “cover-up” by higher-up leaders in the General Staff. He called for “more drastic measures.”
An emergency situation was declared at an airfield on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula. Explosions and huge billows of smoke could be seen from a distance by beachgoers in the Russian-held resort. Authorities said a plane rolled off the runway at the Belbek airfield and ammunition that was reportedly on board caught fire.
The large-scale Russian bombardment struck several cities – including far reaches of western Ukraine close to NATO’s eastern flank – across the country almost simultaneously, propelling the conflict into a new phase and coming just as much of the country was starting to roar back to life.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and his military have vowed to keep fighting to liberate the regions Putin claimed to have annexed Friday, and other Russian-occupied areas.
Ukraine’s nuclear power plant in the Kharkiv district of Kyiv: a report by the U.S. Special Relativity Observatory
The governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleh SynieHubov, claimed that a group of civilians were killed this week in an attack on a convoy trying to leave the district. He called it “сruelty that can’t be justified.” A pregnant woman and 13 children are among the dead.
The Security Service of Ukraine, the secret police force known by the acronym SBU, posted photographs of the attacked convoy. At least one truck appeared to have been blown up, with burned corpses in what remained of its truck bed. There was a vehicle on fire at the back of the convoy. The vehicles that were pock marked with bullet holes were lying on the side of the road.
The Kremlin-backed authorities in the occupied territories have accused the Ukrainians of hitting their targets with U.S.-supplied rockets.
The director of the UN nuclear watchdog is going to visit Kyiv this week after Putin signed a decree saying Russia would take control of the Zaporizhzhia facility. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called it a criminal act and said it considered Putin’s decree “null and void.” The plant would continue to work according to the operator.
Russia did not speak about the report. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Russia told it that “the director-general of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was temporarily detained to answer questions.”
The power plant is caught in the crossfire many times. Russian troops seized the power station in February and Ukrainian technicians continued to run it until September when it was shut down due to ongoing shelling nearby.
The Debacle of Lyman, the Strategic Railway Hub of Donbas, Ukraine: More Than $22.3 billion in Biden’s Legacy to Russia?
In Washington, President Joe Biden signed a bill Friday that provides another infusion — more than $12.3 billion — in military and economic aid linked to the war Ukraine.
Two days after President Vladimir V. Putin held a grandiose ceremony to commemorate the incorporation of four Ukrainian territories into Russia, the debacle in the city — Lyman, a strategic railway hub in the eastern region of Donbas — ratcheted up pressure on a Russian leadership already facing withering criticism at home for its handling of the war and its conscription of up to 300,000 men into military service.
Russian troops in Lyman were plagued by bad planning and desertion in the last few days of their occupation, according to an article published Sunday by Komsomolskaya Pravda.
As Russian forces have fled, Ukrainian troops have pushed forward in their wake, capturing dozens of villages and settlements in Kherson region above the Dnipro.
The war has brought the war home to many Russians as a result of the military commission Mr. Putin called on Sept. 21. Many men have been drafted who were supposed to be ineligible based on factors like age or disability.
Shortly after the president of Ukrainian announced that the military had taken back three villages in one of the regions that Russia had annexed, there was a series of strikes.
The governor wrote on his Telegram that a 3-year old girl was taken to a hospital after she was rescued from the multi-story buildings.
Zaporizhzhia is where a nuclear plant is under Russian occupation and is one of the areas that Russia annexed in violation of international laws on Wednesday. The city of the same name is currently under Ukrainian control.
Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, plans to talk with Ukrainian officials about the Russian move. He will also discuss efforts to set up a secure protection zone around the facility, which has been damaged in the fighting and seen staff including its director abducted by Russian troops.
The “Russian Region” whose Land Grabs are open: The Case of Tyahinka in Ukraine’s Nova Kakhovka
Meanwhile, leaders from more than 40 countries are meeting in Prague on Thursday to launch a “European Political Community” aimed at boosting security and prosperity across the continent, a day after the Kremlin held the door open for further land grabs in Ukraine.
“This is a Russian region,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told reporters on Friday. It has been defined and fixed. There can’t be any changes here.
The Russian army destroyed bridges to the village, but the Ukrainian military retook Tyahinka, a small town near the town of Nova Kakhovka.
The deputy head of the Ukrainian regional government, Yurii Sobolevskyi, said military hospitals were full of wounded Russian soldiers and that Russian military medics lacked supplies. Russian soldiers will eventually be sent to the peninsula which was annexed from Ukranian in the summer of 2014).
When Russian troops pulled back from the Donetsk city of Lyman over the weekend, they retreated so rapidly that they left behind the bodies of their comrades. Some were still lying by the side of the road leading into the city on Wednesday.
During the occupation and during the fight to liberate it, it sustained heavy damage. The 71-year-old man who gave his first name was among about 100 people who lined up for assistance.
The Nightmares of Crime: Explosions in the Interior of Dnipro, Ukraine, during the February 24 Invasion of Crimea
“We want the war to come to an end, the pharmacy and shops and hospitals to start working as they used to,” he said. “Now we don’t have anything yet. Everything is destroyed and pillaged, a complete disaster.”
In his nightly address, a defiant Zelenskyy switched to speaking Russian to tell the Moscow leadership that it has already lost the war that it launched Feb. 24.
“There’s no doubt it was a terrorist act directed at the destruction of critically important civilian infrastructure of the Russian Federation,” Putin said in a video of a meeting Sunday with the chairman of Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin. “And the authors, perpetrators, and those who ordered it are the special services of Ukraine.”
KYIV and DNIPRO, UKRAINE, and MOSCOW — Explosions rocked several cities across Ukraine in the most extensive attack on the country since the early days of Russia’s invasion in February. Hours before the attacks came, Russia blamed Ukrainians for a bridge explosion that damaged it.
He said that the route of the truck had been to several places, including Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, North Ossetia and Krasnodar.
“Again, Zaporizhzhia. Again, merciless attacks on civilians, targeting residential buildings, in the middle of the night,” he wrote. At least 19 people died in Russian missile strikes on apartment buildings in the city on Thursday.
Explosions rocked civilian areas of Dnipro, a major southern city. The bus stop is near the high rise apartment buildings. A missile slammed just a few feet in front of a bus on its morning route to pick up commuters, destroying the bus and blowing out the windows in the nearby apartments.
“There was one explosion, then another one,” 76-year-old Mucola Markovich said. In a flash, the fourth-floor apartment he shared with his wife was gone.
A Russian Ambassador in Crimea: The Attack of a Russian Bridge-Breaking Campaign on the Crimean Sea and the Challenges for Newcomers
Three volunteers dug up a shallow grave in a neighborhood struck by a missile for a German Shepherd that was killed, but missed its leg by the blast.
Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter for Putin, said that the Russian president had failed to respond sufficiently to war hawks enraged by the bridge explosion. The attack and response, he said, has “inspired the opposition, while the loyalists are demoralized.”
“Because once again, they see that when the authorities say that everything is going according to plan and we’re winning, that they’re lying, and it demoralizes them,” he said.
Hardwiring newly claimed territory with expensive, record-breaking infrastructure projects seems to be a penchant of dictators. In 2018, Putin personally opened the Kerch bridge – Europe’s longest – by driving a truck across it. The world’s longest sea bridge was built during that year after Beijing reclaimed Macau and Hong Kong. The $20 billion, 34-mile road bridge opened after about two years of delays.
Crimea is a popular vacation resort for Russians. The people were trying to get to the bridge from the Russian mainland.
IAEA reports the fate of the European nuclear power plant after the December 11 attack on Kiev, a day after the Kremlin blast
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said that Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant was reconnected to the grid on Saturday after it lost its last external power source.
The strikes occurred when people were about to work and kids were being dropped off. A friend in Kyiv told me she had just left the bridge when it was struck.
The strikes followed weeks of Ukrainian ground gains and began two days after a huge explosion damaged the Kerch bridge, the only crossing between the annexed Crimean peninsula and Russia. The blast that the Kremlin used as a justification for the Monday assault gave Ukraine a strong strategic boost and bruised the Russian mind.
Local media report issues with communications from the east to the west. Rescue efforts across Ukraine were slowed due to repeated volleys of explosives coming from the sky.
“It’s a tough morning when you’re dealing with terrorists,” said Zelenskyy in the video, which recalled the selfie he took the night Russia invaded in February. “They’re choosing targets to harm as many people as possible.”
Explosions Hit Kyiv and Other Cities: Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko and the Transport Minister Ihor Makovtsev
In Kyiv, Ukraine Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko says that at least two museums and the National Philharmonic concert halls sustained heavy damage. Ukraine’s National Railway stated that the country’s main passenger terminal was damaged by a nearby strike.
“This happened at rush hour, as lots of public transport was operating in the city,” said Ihor Makovtsev, the head of the department of transport for the Dnipro city council, as he stood by the wreckage. The driver and four passengers were taken to the hospital with serious injuries.
“It’s hard for me to think about the logic that goes into their work because all our transportation is only for civilian purposes,” he said.
81-year-old Viktor Shevchenko looked out from what once were the windows of his first floor balcony, just next to the bus stop. There is shattered glass on the ground. He said he went to his kitchen to make breakfast, only minutes before the blast.
“The explosion blew open all of my cabinets, and nearly knocked me to the ground,” he said. I would have been on the balcony, full of glass, in just five minutes.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/10/1127794708/explosions-hit-kyiv-and-other-cities
Is the Russian War on Crimea Real or Real? The Story of Kiev Attacks on the Kerch Straight Bridge with Putin on July 24, 2016
Our enemy believes that missile strikes are effective means of intimidation. They are not. They are war crimes. Civilians are dying and getting injured. The missile terrorists need to be brought to justice by the civilized world. And will do it. The story is that a person wrote about it
“We warned Zelenskyy that Russia hadn’t really started yet,” wrote Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a loyalist to Putin who repeatedly has attacked Russia’s Defense Ministry for incompetence in carrying out the military campaign.
Editor’s Note: Michael Bociurkiw (@WorldAffairsPro) is a global affairs analyst. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is a regular contributor to CNN Opinion. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion.
Even amid irrepressible jubilation here in Ukraine in the aftermath of a massive explosion that hit the hugely strategic and symbolic Kerch Straight bridge over the weekend, fears of retaliation by the Kremlin were never far away.
The area around my office in Odesa was quiet between air raid sirens and there were reports of missiles and drones being shot down. (Normally at this time of the day, nearby restaurants would be heaving with customers, and chatter of plans for upcoming weddings and parties).
The videos show cars driving in the city center while people on the sidewalks shoutGlory to Ukranian. The soldiers drove slowly past a crowd as the people reached out to touch them.
Businesses were asked to shift work online as much as possible, while millions of people in cities across Ukraine were told to stay in bomb shelters for most of the day.
With so many asylum seekers coming back to their home countries, the attacks could cause more damage to business confidence.
For Putin, the symbolism of the only bridge linking mainland Russia and Crimea cannot be overstated. That the attack took place a day after his 70th birthday (the timing prompted creative social media denizens to create a split-screen video of Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President”) can be taken as an added blow to an aging autocrat whose ability to withstand shame and humiliation is probably nil.
The explosion lit up the social media channels of the Ukrainians. They said their sense of jubilation through text messages.
Vladimir Putin’s attack on the Kherson region as a wake-up call to Russian forces in the face of Ukrainian counter-offensives
It was also an act of selfish desperation: facing increasing criticism at home, including on state-controlled television, has placed Putin on unusually thin ice.
Faced with growing setbacks, the Kremlin appointed a new overall commander of Russia’s invasion. But there is little sign that Gen. Sergey Surovikin can lead his forces back onto the front foot before the end of the year, given the pace and cost of the Ukrainian counter-offensives.
The strikes on central Kyiv and the government quarter are significant. Western governments should see it as a red line being crossed on this 229th day of the war.
What is crucially important now is for Washington and other allies to use urgent telephone diplomacy to urge China and India – which presumably still have some leverage over Putin – to resist the urge to use even more deadly weapons.
The country needs high tech defense systems to protect vital energy infrastructure. It’s important to protect heating systems in the winter.
The time has also come for the West to further isolate Russia with trade and travel restrictions – but for that to have sufficient impact, Turkey and Gulf states, which receive many Russian tourists, need to be pressured to come on board.
The humanitarian crisis that will be felt throughout Europe if these measures are not put in place will only be worsened by the violence of Putin. A weak reaction will be taken as a sign in the Kremlin that it can continue to weaponize energy, migration and food.
The announcement by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin came shortly after the head of the Moscow-backed administration in Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, appealed to the Kremlin for help moving residents out of harm’s way, in the latest indication that Russian forces were struggling in the face of Ukrainian advances.
Saldo claimed cities throughout Kherson, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia claimed to have annexed in violation of international law, were being hammered by dangerous airstrikes.
If the residents of the Kherson region wish to protect themselves from missile strikes, they should leave and take their children with them.
However, Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Kherson region’s military administration, said that the civilian transports were not an “evacuation.”
Stremousov has been openly critical of the war’s decision-makers in Moscow and on the battlefield. Last week, he blamed the military setbacks in Kherson on “incompetent commanders” who have not been held accountable for their mistakes.
Not for the first time, the war is teetering towards an unpredictable new phase. “This is now the third, fourth, possibly fifth different war that we’ve been observing,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme.
Experts say the next few weeks of the war are vital as each side seeks to strike another blow, and there is a chance of a spike in intensity due to the cold months.
Giles said that anything that could be described as a victory for the Ukranians is more plausible now. The response from Russia is likely to intensify.
During the summer, a suggestion thatUkraine lacked the ability to seize ground was built up in the West and in Russia, but it has been disproved by these counter-offensives.
There are unconfirmed videos and photos of the raising of a Ukrainian flag atop the Kherson city administration building and police headquarters, as well as rejoicing locals in nearby villages. Several videos show Ukrainians tearing down Russian billboards.
“The Russians are playing for the whistle – (hoping to) avoid a collapse in their frontline before the winter sets in,” Samir Puri, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the author of “Russia’s Road to War with Ukraine,” told CNN.
If they can get the frontline to look as it is, this will be a huge success for the Russians.
A big blow in the Donbas would send a strong signal that Ukraine will improve its position, and the whole of Europe will feel the impact of rising energy prices.
“There are so many reasons why there is an incentive for Ukraine to get things done quickly,” Giles said. “The winter energy crisis in Europe, and energy infrastructure and power being destroyed in Ukraine itself, is always going to be a test of resilience for Ukraine and its Western backers.”
NATO leaders have vowed to stand behind Ukraine regardless of how long the war takes, but several European countries – particularly those that relied heavily on Russian energy – are staring down a crippling cost-of-living crisis which, without signs of Ukrainian progress on the battlefield, could endanger public support.
Ukrainian national electricity company, Ukrenergo, says it has been able to keep the power flowing to the capital city and central regions of the country after Russian missile attacks on Monday and Tuesday. The prime minister of Ukranian warned that there was a lot of work to be done to repair damaged equipment and asked people to reduce their energy usage during peak hours.
Experts believe it remains unlikely that Russia’s aerial bombardment will form a recurrent pattern; while estimating the military reserves of either army is a murky endeavor, Western assessments suggest Moscow may not have the capacity to keep it up.
Jeremy Fleming, the UK’s spy chief, said on Tuesday that Russian commanders on the ground knew that their supplies were running out.
That conclusion was also reached by the ISW, which said in its daily update on the conflict Monday that the strikes “wasted some of Russia’s dwindling precision weapons against civilian targets, as opposed to militarily significant targets.”
Exactly how much weaponry and manpower each side has left in reserve will be crucial to determining how the momentum will shift in the coming weeks. Ukraine said it intercepted 18 cruise missiles on Tuesday and dozens more on Monday, but it is urging its Western allies for more equipment to repel any future attacks.
The Russian government doesn’t have the equipment to sustain a high-tempo missile assault into the future, which is why the barrage of missile strikes is going to be an occasional feature.
The effect of such an intervention in terms of pure manpower is limited, as Russia has less than 5,000 active duty troops in and around its borders. But it would mean another assault on the Ukrainian side of the border.
“The reopening of a northern front would be another new challenge for Ukraine,” Giles said. It would give Russia a new path into the area that has been reclaimed by the Ukrainians, should Putin choose to do so.
Now Zelensky will hope for more supplies in the short-term as he seeks to drive home those gains. In the second wave of strikes on Tuesday, the leader said more than half the missiles and drones launched at him were brought down.
Ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers, Jens Stoltenberg said thatUkraine needed more systems to stop missile attacks.
“These air defense systems are making a difference because many of the incoming missiles [this week] were actually shot down by the Ukrainian air defense systems provided by NATO Allies,” he said.
Ukraine “badly needed” modern systems such as the IRIS-T that arrived this week from Germany and the NASAMS expected from the United States, Bronk said.
What are the hot spots in the Donbas versus Kyiv battles in the next two years? A look at the case of the Ukrainians
The coming weeks are crucial for both the battlefield as well as in Europe, according to experts. “As ever, where Putin goes next depends on how the rest of the world is responding,” Giles said. The failure of Western countries to confront and deter Russia has shaped its attitude.
The war has gone through different phases, meaning that it is difficult to assess whether one side had an advantage or not. When the Russians lost the battle for Kyiv to the Ukrainians, they continued fighting in the Donbas and were defeated in the process.
The key hotspot in the area are neighboring towns. There are heavy fighting in Soledar and Bakhmut, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy accused Russia of including convicts “with long sentences for serious crimes” in its front-line troops in return for pay and amnesty — something Western intelligence officials have also asserted.
Russia’s response to Ukrainian counteroffensive: “Coming out of nowhere” — a statement by Marat Khusnullin
The mayor’s building in Donetsk was damaged by a rocket attack. Plumes of smoke swirled around the building, which had rows of blown-out windows and a partially collapsed ceiling. Cars were burned to the ground. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Kyiv didn’t claim responsibility or comment on the attack.
Zelenskyy’s office said Moscow was shelling towns and villages along the front line in the east, while the hostilities were ongoing in the southern Kherson region.
The rockets at Nikopol, across from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, damaged power lines, gas pipelines, and a raft of civilian businesses and residential buildings, Ukrainian officials said. Russia and Ukraine have for months accused each other of firing at and around the nuclear plant, which is Europe’s largest. It’s run by its pre-occupation Ukrainian staff under Russian oversight.
Russia opened an investigation into the killing of 11 people and the wounding of 15 other people, two of whom were from a former Soviet republic, at a military firing range Saturday. The Russian Defense Ministry said it was a terrorist attack.
— France, seeking to puncture perceptions that it has lagged in supporting Ukraine, confirmed it’s pledging air-defense missiles and stepped-up military training to Ukraine. Up to 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers will be embedded with military units in France, rotating through for several weeks of combat training, specialized training in logistics and other needs, and training on equipment supplied by France, the French defense minister said in an interview published in Le Parisien.
According to the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, Russia deported Ukrainians in a way that was likely to be described as ethnic cleansing.
It referenced statements made this week by Russian authorities that claimed that “several thousand” children from a southern region occupied by Moscow had been placed in rest homes and children’s camps amid the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The original remarks by Russia’s deputy prime minister, Marat Khusnullin, were reported by RIA Novosti on Friday.
Russian authorities said they placed children from Russian-held areas of Ukraine who were orphans to be adopted by Russians, in violation of an international treaty on genocide prevention.
Ukrainian officials say that Russians are afraid that people left behind could sabotage the Russian military because they have told civilians to leave. The region’s governor has warned that anyone still in the area could be treated as hostile.
— A Russian commander wanted for his role in the downing of a Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine in 2014 has been deployed to the front, according to social media posts by pro-Kremlin commentators. Posts by Maksim Fomin and others said Igor Girkin, also known as Strelkov, has been given responsibility for an unspecified Russian front-line unit.
Girkin has been on an international wanted list over his alleged involvement in the downing of Kuala Lumpur-bound flight MH17, which killed 298 people. He remains the most high-profile suspect in a related murder trial in a Dutch court, with a verdict expected Nov. 17.
In recent times, Girkin’s posts have criticized Moscow’s battlefield failures. The Ukrainian defense intelligence agency promised to give a $100,000 reward to anyone who captures him.
Russian-Backed Army and Civil Defence Forces in the Kherson-Korev Region: U.S. Airborne Attacks on the Dnipro Front
Russia-Backed authorities began to evacuate civilians from Kherson on Wednesday in a sign that Moscow’s hold over the territory may be in serious danger.
Saldo offered residents the option of relocating to cities “in any part of Russia,” and said the Russian government would provide housing vouchers to those who wished to move further from the fighting.
He added that residents whose homes might be damaged from shelling could receive compensation from the Russian government.
In what appeared to be carefully staged remarks, Surovikin called the decision to withdraw to the eastern bank of the Dnipro River “difficult,” but one that would allow Russia to save the lives of military personnel and preserve Russia’s combat capability.
“We will operate with the goal of maximizing the safety of civilian population and our soldiers. “That’s our focus, that’s our priority,” he told the Zvezda channel, which is funded by Russia’s Defense Ministry.
Grisly videos filmed by Ukrainian drones showing Russian infantry being struck by artillery in poorly prepared positions have partly supported those assertions, as has reporting in Russian news media of mobilized soldiers telling relatives about high casualty rates. The videos have not been independently verified and their exact location on the front line could not be determined.
The Russian military has tripled their intensity of attacks on some parts of the front, according to a statement by the commander of the Ukrainian military. He didn’t say where the attacks were coming from or what the time frame was.
General Zaluzhnyi wrote about the situation at the front. Ukrainian forces, he said he had told his U.S. colleague, were beating back the attacks, “thanks to the courage and skills of our warriors.”
An assessment from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based analytical group, also said that the increase in infantry in the Donbas region in the east had not resulted in Russia’s gaining new ground.
The institute said on Thursday that if Russian forces had waited until enough personnel arrived to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses, they would have had more success.
In the south, where Ukrainian troops are advancing toward the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, the Ukrainian military said Friday morning that its artillery battalions had fired more than 160 times at Russian positions over the past 24 hours, but it also reported Russian return fire into Ukrainian positions.
With Russia and Ukrainian forces planning a battle in Kherson and conflicting signals, the remaining residents of the city have been stocking up on food and fuel.
Kherson, the madness, and battle-looms in Ukraine: a biography of a Russian man living in Zaporizhia
“I still can’t believe that I left there,” says Viktor, while pulling a red suitcase from the black car he rode to Zaporizhia, about 25 miles from occupied territory. “The madness.”
Outside of Kherson is his home. He and his wife were parents to three girls there. A neighbor told Viktor that the Russians broke into their house after they left.
A volunteer at a shelter named Artyom helps care for Khersonevacuees as if he were his own family. We are not using his full name because Artyom wanted us to protect his relatives in Kherson.
His wife generally stays home as much as she can. She sells potatoes and vegetables from her garden at the street market to make money.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/07/1134465380/kherson-ukraine-russia-battle-looms
The streets of Kherson during the First World War II: Artyom and his wife, Holovnya, and their collaborations
Artyom does not think it’s okay. He counts his fingers as he lists off his various fears: He worries that the Russians will stop his wife. He is worried that she will get sick. She’s four months’ pregnant. He worries about the baby.
Holovnya, who is living in Kyiv, calls some of them collaborators. And he says some are people who just can’t leave. Many people are older. Others have few resources. Their lives right now are “intense,” he says.
Since the war started, the city has seen a lot of street markets, but little public interaction. Most of the stores in Kherson are either closed or have empty shelves, so local farmers and bakers have been selling and trading items at the street markets.
“You can buy almost anything from starting with medicine and finishing with meat,” says Natalyia Schevchenko who fled Kherson this summer. “But it’s terrible to observe. On one car, they sell medicine on the hood and on the side they cut meat.”
He remains in contact with people in the city even though he is volunteering at an Odesa nonprofit. She says her grandmother, who refused to leave, gives her regular updates.
Artyom and his wife talk whenever they can. They generally try to keep their conversations light; they worry that Russians are listening in.
It’s scary — but they agree it’s a good thing. They think that this means that the Ukrainians are getting closer, which could mean that Artyom can go home soon.
The Kherson regional military administration blamed Russian troops for the damage to the power lines, despite state media in Russia saying that Ukrainian shelling was to blame.
The Russian forces have placed mines at water towers in Beryslav, located less than 50 miles from Kherson city, and north of a critical dam near the front line of fighting.
Some 250,000 people lived in the city before the war. Ukrainian activists can’t say how accurate guesses are, but they estimate 30,000 to 60,000 people remain.
When Russian forces stormed across the Antonivsky Bridge over the Dnipro River in March and into Kherson city, a major port and a former shipbuilding center, it marked their biggest success of the early days of the war. The effort to use the Kherson region as a bridgehead for a drive farther west was unsuccessful.
“Not a single piece of military equipment or weaponry was left behind on the right [west] bank,” the statement added. Russian servicemen moved to the left of the Dnieper.
Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence agency said it would guarantee the rights of any abandoned Russian soldiers who surrendered, under a program called “I Want to Live.”
Your commanders ordered you to dress in civilian clothes and try to escape from Kherson. “You won’t succeed,” the Ukrainian statement said.
Reports suggested that the area’s lone bridge across the Dnipro had been destroyed, leading to the Russian withdrawal. Videos shared online appeared to show a large section of the bridge sheared off completely. Russian and Ukrainian officials traded accusations over who was responsible for the damage.
The Russian defense minister was shown a proposal to withdraw from Kherson from the commander of Russia’s forces in Ukranian.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told Reuters in an interview on Thursday he believed it would take “as a minimum, one week” for Russian forces to leave the city and that Moscow still has some 40,000 troops in the region.
The Kremlin still considers the area of Kherson to be part of Russia, even after the soldiers fled.
The military said it would proceed cautiously through Kherson region as they warned Russian troops were mining roads and destroying critical infrastructure.
Videos shared by Ukrainian government officials on social media showed scenes of civilians who had endured nearly nine months of occupation cheering the arrival of a contingent of Ukrainian troops.
As he spoke, Ukrainian soldiers continued to move through towns and villages in the region, greeted joyously by tearful residents who had endured nine months occupation.
U.S. forces and civilians in Kherson city during the overnight occupation of the Dnieper river and Tyahinka
Oleh Voitsehovsky, the commander of a Ukrainian drone reconnaissance unit, said he had seen no Russian troops or equipment in his zone along the front less than four miles north of Kherson city.
“The Russians left all the villages,” he said. We looked at dozens of villages and did not see a single car. We don’t see how they are leaving. They retreat quietly, at night.”
The apparent final hours of the Russian occupation overnight Thursday to Friday featured several explosions and were chaotic and disorienting, according to residents of Kherson reached by telephone on Friday morning.
Serhiy, a retiree who asked not to be published for security reasons, said in text messages that the conditions in Kherson were bad before Ukrainian soldiers began their sweep through the city.
He wrote that it was not possible to call the fire department at night because a building burned in the center. “There was no phone signal, no electricity, no heating and no water.”
While there was no visible Russian military presence in the city on Friday, four residents described seeing Russian soldiers dressed in civilian clothes — some armed — moving about parts of the city.
Russian forces were setting up defensive positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro and also shelling the Ukrainians across the river.
In the evening of Friday, President Zelensky posted a video of celebrations in Kherson where a crowd was waving flags and chanting ZSU, the acronym for the armed forces.
Russian military units moved their equipment to the left bank of the Dnieper River in the Kherson direction. [Moscow time] this morning,” the ministry said on its official Telegram channel, using the Russian spelling for the river.
Russia has been loading boats that seem suitable to cross the river and try to escape, according to the Ukrainian military.
Now that Ukrainian forces have recaptured Kherson as far as the Dnipro river, the two sides face each other across the river over a distance of some 250 kilometers – from the area around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to the edge of the Black Sea.
A video showing Ukrainian forces being welcomed by residents on the main highway in Tyahinka was posted on social media on Friday. The village is just 14 miles (20 km) west of the hydroelectric dam and bridges that stretch across the Dnieper river at Nova Kakhovka.
According to videos on social media, residents of the town of Bilozerka raised a Ukrainian flag and ripped down Russian propaganda billboards on Friday.
Russian-appointed officials claimed in Kherson six weeks ago that 85% of voters supported integration into the Russian Federation, but there were scenes of people greeting Ukrainian troops across the region. Kherson was one of four Ukrainian regions illegally annexed by Russia in September.
Kyiv officials had warned that retreating Russian troops could turn the regional capital of Kherson into a “city of death” on the way out, and an official in southern Ukraine warned residents Friday to be wary of quickly returning to recently liberated territory due to the threat of mines.
“There are a lot of mines in the liberated territories and settlements,” Vitaliy Kim, head of Mykolaiv region military administration, said on Telegram. “Don’t go there for no reason. There are casualties.
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This is a topic for the Russian Federation, according to Peskov. It has been defined and fixed. There can’t be any changes here.
“Even when the city is not yet completely cleansed of the enemy’s presence,” Zelenskyy said in his address, “the people of Kherson themselves are already removing Russian symbols from the streets and buildings and any traces of the occupiers’ stay in Kherson.”
The depth of their suffering has yet to come into focus. For months, residents interviewed by journalists have told stories of friends being abducted, children illegally deported, relatives tortured and killed. Evidence of human rights abuses has arisen after Russian pulled out of Ukraine.
The initial announcement drew skepticism from Ukraine’s government, which previously voiced concern that a troop withdrawal there could be a Kremlin ploy to lure Ukrainian forces into the city.
The pullout is seen as a blow to the war effort by Putin, and he has yet to speak on it.