KYIV, (Reuters) – A Russian-installed official in southern Ukraine said Moscow will likely pull its troops from the west bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson and urged civilians to leave, possibly signalling a retreat that would be a setback to Russia’s war.
There was silence from senior officials in Moscow. The Kyiv government and Western military analysts remained cautious, suggesting Russia could be setting a trap for advancing Ukrainian troops.
“Most likely our units, our soldiers, will leave for the left (eastern) bank,” Kirill Stremousov, the Russian-installed deputy civilian administrator of the Kherson region, said in an interview on Thursday with Solovyov Live, a pro-Kremlin online media outlet.
The area includes Kherson city, capital of the region of the same name, and the only major city Russia has captured intact since its invasion in February. It also includes one side of a dam across the Dnipro which controls the water supply to irrigate Crimea, the peninsula Russia has occupied since 2014.
Previously, Russia had denied its forces were planning to withdraw from the area.
In lengthy comments on Thursday night on a programme organised by RT television, Stremousov was somewhat more equivocal, saying “we have to take some very difficult decisions now. Whatever our strategy might be. And some people might be afraid to recognise things.
“But for me it is very important to try to say at the moment – People, please go over to the east bank. You will be in a far safer position,” Stremousov said.
At another point, Stremousov said he hoped “that we will not leave Kherson” and if that were to happen, “it will be a big blow not only in terms of the image of us all, but a big blow for people who could stay here.”
Speculation swirled over whether Russia was indeed pulling out, after photos circulated on the internet showing the main administrative building in Kherson city with Russia’s flag no longer flying atop it. Ukraine said those images could be Russian disinformation.
Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern military command, said it could be a Russian trap.
“This could be a manifestation of a particular provocation, in order to create the impression that the settlements are abandoned, that it is safe to enter them, while they are preparing for street battles,” she said in televised comments.
Over the past 24 hours, Russian forces have launched three missile and 16 air strikes on Ukrainian targets as well as more than 40 shelling episodes, the Ukrainian military said in a statement on Thursday night.
On the southern front, Russian fire hit more than 35 towns and there were more than 30 reconnaissance missions by drones, the statement said. Ukrainian aircraft made 12 strikes on eight Russian-occupied areas where men and equipment were concentrated, hitting four anti-aircraft units, the military said. Ukrainian artillery also struck three areas with men and equipment and two ammunition depots, it said.
Reuters was not able to verify battlefield reports.
A Ukrainian foreign ministry statement accused the Russian authorities of carrying out “mass forced movement of residents” in Kherson and Zaporzhzhia provinces in the south and Luhansk and Donetsk regions in the east “to the territory of temporarily occupied Crimea or to the Russian Federation.”
Ukraine has accused Russian forces of war crimes during the eight-month-long war, charges that Moscow rejects. Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians, though the conflict has killed thousands, displaced millions and destroyed cities and towns. Its attacks in the past few weeks on Ukrainian energy and water supplies have hit civilians hard as winter approaches, the Kyiv government says. As of Thursday night, 4.5 million Ukrainians in the capital Kyiv and 10 other regions were temporarily without power, the latest outages caused by Russian attacks, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address.
Temperatures can fall far below freezing in winter, now just weeks away.
Israeli PM Lapid congratulates Netanyahu on election win
JERUSALEM, (Reuters) – Israel Prime Minister Yair Lapid yesterday congratulated Benjamin Netanyahu on his election win as final results confirmed the former premier’s triumphant comeback at the head of a solidly right-wing alliance.
Netanyahu’s victory is set to end an unprecedented stalemate in Israel after five elections in less than four years.
This time Netanyahu, the dominant Israeli politician of his generation, won a clear parliamentary majority, boosted by ultranationalist and religious parties.
Tuesday’s ballot saw out the centrist Lapid, and his rare alliance of conservatives, liberals and Arab politicians which, over 18 months in power, made diplomatic inroads with Turkey and Lebanon and kept the economy humming.
With the conflict with the Palestinians surging anew and touching off Jewish-Arab tensions within Israel, Netanyahu’s rightist Likud and kindred parties took 64 of the Knesset’s 120 seats.
Netanyahu still has to be officially tasked by the president with forming a government, a process that could take weeks.
“The time has come to impose order here. The time has come for there to be a landlord,” tweeted Itamar Ben-Gvir of the far-right Religious Zionism party, Likud’s likely senior partner.
He was responding to a stabbing reported by Jerusalem police. In the West Bank, troops killed an Islamic Jihad militant and a 45-year-old man in a separate incident, medics said. Queried on the latter death, the army said it opened fire when Palestinians attacked them with rocks and petrol bombs.
Later in the day, air attack sirens went off in south Israel after Gaza militants fired a rocket that was intercepted by missile defences, the military said. It responded with strikes against militant targets in Gaza. No injuries were reported.
Ben-Gvir- a West Bank settler and former member of Kach, a Jewish militant group on Israeli and U.S. terrorist watchlists – wants to become police minister.
Israeli media, citing political sources, said the new government may be clinched by mid-month. Previous coalitions in recent years have had narrower parliamentary majorities that made them vulnerable to no-confidence motions.
With coalition building talks yet to officially begin, it was still unclear what position Ben-Gvir might hold in a future government. Since the election, both he and Netanyahu have pledged to serve all citizens.
But Ben-Gvir’s ascendancy has stirred alarm among the 21% Arab minority and centre-left Jews – and especially among Palestinians whose U.S.-sponsored statehood talks with Israel broke down in 2014.
While Washington has publicly reserved judgment pending the new Israeli coalition’s formation, a U.S. State Department spokesman on Wednesday emphasised the countries’ “shared values”.
“We hope that all Israeli government officials will continue to share the values of an open, democratic society, including tolerance and respect for all in civil society, particularly for minority groups,” the spokesperson said.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides said he spoke with Netanyahu and told him he looked forward to “working together to maintain the unbreakable bond.”
