Yesterday’s post about Russians starting to bug of Kherson Oblast north/west of the Dnipro Rover is already obsolete, as Russia appears to have completed its retreat.
Russia’s military said on Friday it had completed its withdrawal from Kherson, a lightning-fast retreat of tens of thousands of troops across the Dnipro river in the south of Ukraine.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, one of President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, on Wednesday ordered troops to leave Kherson in a pullout that allows Ukrainian forces to move closer to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
Russia’s defence ministry said all Russian forces and equipment had been transferred to the eastern bank of the Dnipro. It said the withdrawal was completed by 5 a.m. Moscow time (0200 GMT) on Friday.
“The transfer of Russian troop units to the left bank of the Dnipro river has been completed,” the defence ministry said in a statement.
“Not a single unit of military equipment or weapons have been left on the right (western) bank. All Russian servicemen crossed to the left bank,” it added. Russia, it said, had not suffered any loss of personnel or equipment during the withdrawal.
I’m betting that last paragraph is a huge exaggeration, as we already have reports of wounded Russian soldiers being abandoned in the retreat. And there are already videos of captured equipment:
Lots of trophies today. The trophy Russian TOS-A1 "Solntsepek" pulls the trophy tank. The Russian army, as usual, leaves its heavy equipment in working condition. pic.twitter.com/cXBuZ3ehgN
— NOΓL πͺπΊ πΊπ¦ (@NOELreports) November 6, 2022
Whether it will measure up to Peter Zeihan’s prediction of more equipment captured than in Izyum remains to be seen.
Livemap shows pretty much all of Kherson Oblast liberated, and reports Ukrainian troops entering Kherson City.
Center of Kherson awaiting the arrival of Ukrainian soldiers pic.twitter.com/SsyBRlhKiE
— Special Kherson Cat ππΊπ¦ (@bayraktar_1love) November 11, 2022
ππΊπ¦ Kherson city liberated!
Glory to Ukraine! pic.twitter.com/BnZmGuCfnT— SportBoxingUA (@sports_ua) November 11, 2022
#Kherson City is liberated! πΊπ¦
11th November 2022πΊπ¦
Decisive Ukrainian Victory!πΊπ¦
Congratulations and Π‘Π»Π°Π²Π° Π£ΠΊΡΠ°ΡΠ½Ρ! πΊπ¦ pic.twitter.com/txgUaudWRY
— Kristina Jakhua (@86kristi) November 11, 2022
#BREAKING: Ukrainian forces hang a flag at the General Directorate of the National Police Building in Kherson City.
Ukrainian forces have liberated Kherson!
π46.633523,32.620375 pic.twitter.com/1RP1hOygOX
— Moshe Schwartz (@YWNReporter) November 11, 2022
And Russia blew a span out of the Antonovsky Bridge.
It appears that the Nova Kakhkovka Bridge has also been blown:
NOVA KAKHOVKA DAM+LOCK π§΅
/16
It looks like several spans of the bridge along the dam were blown up by Russians during the retreat pic.twitter.com/hmaK13SKNG— Special Kherson Cat ππΊπ¦ (@bayraktar_1love) November 11, 2022
Right now the Kherson retreat looks like considerably less of a debacle than the rout in Kharkiv. We’ll see how many troops were captured and how much equipment captured after the dust settles.
Tags: Antonovsky Bridge, Dnipro River, Foreign Policy, Kherson, Military, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Suchomimus, video
Good. They’ve won and pushed Russia out. Now perhaps the Biden regime can stop sending Ukraine BILLIONS of taxpayer USD and use it domestically to improve our infrastructure – bridges, internet access, roads etc. But I doubt that will happen. By next week the fraud Zelenskyy will be begging even more money from the Biden regime to repair their infrastructure and the war mongers in Congress will willingly hand it all over. Disgusting.
Russia hasn’t pulled out of all of Ukraine, just the section of the Kherson oblast north and west of the Dnipro river. But that section was quite important, since Kherson City was far and away the largest city Russia captured during the war.
A lot of combat remains to eject Russia from the rest of Ukrainian territory they’re occupying…including Donbas and Crimea.
Russian fascism/imperialism is, in my opinion, the greater threat than Ukrainian and DemCong corruption.
I’d like to see a complete Russian expulsion from all Ukrainian territory with them paying war reparations. Won’t happen but hope springs eternal. I still see this conflict as Russia’s to lose.
I am very surprised how quickly this retreat happened. 20k to 40k Russian troops were supposed to be on the right bank of the Dnieper. How quickly can you withdraw those troops in only 2-3 days when you only have two bridges and some ferries? I don’t know the logistics of how long it would really take, but I would have thought it’d be something more like a week.
The Ukrainians have also been advancing quite rapidly so it’s not like the Russians just slipped away while the Ukrainians were getting ready. Shouldn’t we be seeing blocking encounters where Russian troops are delaying the advancing Ukrainians for a day or two? Instead the front lines seemed to have shifted immediately. Were the Russians just that good at getting away? Or did some of those front line troops just surrender rather than risk being killed or abandoned?
I do not doubt the Russians got their elite troops out first (possibly even before the announcement was made) and as many others as they could. But I would be very shocked if only the wounded were left behind. I would expect in a scenario like this that there’d be thousands of Russians left behind. If the Russians did manage to extract almost everyone I will be shocked.
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