Invasion of Ukraine: The Big Retreat!
Sukla Sen
Sukla Sen
Sukla Sen
At 5am on Wednesday Serhii Melnikov heard a noise outside. The Russian soldiers who were living in the house opposite – number six, Shevchenko street – were packing up to leave. They had occupied the village of Mylove in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region for eight long months. Now they were off, as part of a humiliating pull-out from the right-bank of the Dnipro river and the city of Kherson.
“Vladimir Putin said Russia would be here for ever. In the end they left in five minutes and ran away like goats,” Melnikov told the Observer, the first newspaper to reach Mylove since its liberation late on Thursday. He added: “Putin wanted to kill us. He’s ended up destroying his own country. Russia’s retreat from Kherson is an enormous failure.”
...
The last moments of occupation were tinged with vindictiveness. On their way out Russian troops blew up the village’s school and nursery buildings, where they had lived, and brought down the radio tower. On Saturday the nursery resembled a concrete heap; a sign placed outside read: “Mines”. They detonated Mylove’s crossing over a tributary of the Dnipro river, and other key pieces of infrastructure.
Ukrainian special forces swept in on Thursday night. By Friday morning residents had put out blue-and-yellow flags and were celebrating their first hours of freedom. They hugged Ukrainian soldiers sporting yellow armbands and offered them homemade pastries. “Our guys are heroes. God looked after us,” Melnikov’s mother in law Liudmyla said. “It’s been hard. I didn’t get my pension or tablets for my blood pressure.”
There were similar scenes of jubilation in Kherson, the province’s capital, which Moscow seized during the first days of March. Locals danced around a bonfire outside the regional administration building, sang patriotic songs, and chanted “Z-S-U”, the initials of Ukraine’s triumphant armed forces. Cars tooted their horns; citizens waved banners adorned with watermelons, the Kherson region’s much-loved fruit.
The last few days have been a disaster for Moscow. They suggest Putin’s audacious military plan to conquer Ukraine has failed, shot through as it was with hubris and magical thinking. His army was unable to conquer Kyiv and Kharkiv. It has now lost control of its only functional major city. Demonstrators protested in spring against Russian rule and on Friday were back on the streets, rejoicing at its demise.
The Russian retreat last week was a shambolic affair, announced by Putin’s hapless defence minister Sergei Shoigu. The last soldiers disabled the Antonivskiy Bridge, which Ukraine had targeted with US-supplied Himars missiles, and ran in panic across a pontoon crossing. Another bridge was severed at the Kakhovka hydroelectric station, which leads to the occupied city of Nova Kakhovka.
These were historic scenes. The war, however, is far from over. On Friday, loud booms could be heard across the Dnipro river. Russian soldiers – many of them newly mobilised – have been digging defensive positions on the left bank. The two armies now face off over an expanse of water stretching for hundreds of kilometres. Russia still controls the southern chunk of Kherson province and a land corridor stretching to Mariupol and the eastern Donbas.