SERGEI ILYIN/SPUTNIK/AFP/Getty Images
Russian authorities are laying the groundwork to justify a planned retreat from Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson following strategic failures and losses, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
A report on the Russian war effort published by ISW on Wednesday night argues that the Kremlin is “likely setting information conditions to justify planned Russian retreats and significant territorial losses in Kherson Oblast.”
General Sergei Surovikin, commander of the Russian Army in Ukraine, teased “hard decisions” in Kherson during a Wednesday appearance on Russian state-run television. Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed head of Kherson, announced on the same day that the west bank of the Dnipro River was being evacuated in anticipation of a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
“Surovikin’s and Saldo’s statements are likely attempts to set information conditions for a full Russian retreat across the Dnipro River, which would cede Kherson City and other significant territory in Kherson Oblast to advancing Ukrainian troops,” the ISW report states.
“Russian military leaders … [are] likely attempting to mitigate the informational and operational consequences of failing to defend against another successful Ukrainian advance,” it continues.
Unconfirmed social media reports claimed that Russian intelligence service (FSB) officers and Chechen troops had already begun to withdraw from the city of Kherson two or three days ago. The city, on the Dnipro River’s west bank, is the capital of the Kherson region and the first major settlement that Russia captured after invading Ukraine on February 24.
ISW said Russian forces are planning to launch a “false-flag” attack on the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, which is less than 50 miles east of the city of Kherson. Surovikin and Saldo have both preemptively claimed in recent days that the Ukrainian military is planning to launch an attack on the plant.
“The Kremlin could attempt to leverage such a false-flag attack to overshadow the news of a third humiliating retreat for Russian forces, this time from western Kherson,” ISW said. “Such an attack would also further the false Russian information operation portraying Ukraine as a terrorist state that deliberately targets civilians.”
Russia may also be planning to use the evacuation of the city of Kherson as “a cover for the mass forced removal of civilians from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine,” according to ISW. The think tank said evacuated Ukrainians could then be forced into the Russian Army, which would offset “the losses and failures” of Putin’s partial mobilization.
Putin declared martial law in Kherson on Wednesday, alongside four other regions of Ukraine that he claimed to have annexed for Russia this month. ISW described the martial law declaration as “legal theater” intended to create “a framework for future mobilization and domestic restrictions.”
Newsweek has reached out to the Russian government for comment.
