Putin's Forces Are Retreating From Key City of Lyman
RIVNE, Ukraine — Russian forces withdrew from the strategic eastern city of Lyman on Saturday, just a day after President Vladimir V. Putin’s internationally derided declaration that the region where it lies and three others in Ukraine were now part of Russia.
The battle for Lyman, a city in Donetsk Province with a pre-war population of 20,000, is particularly poorly timed for the Kremlin after it illegally declared its annexation of swaths of Ukraine and Kyiv’s stunning victories in the country’s northeast last month.
Hours after Ukraine’s defense ministry said its forces were entering the city, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said in it had taken the decision to pull out of Lyman.
“In connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement, the allied troops were withdrawn” from the city to a “more advantageous” location, the ministry said in a statement posted on Telegram.
The acknowledgment came after Ukraine’s Defense Ministry posted a video on Twitter showing two soldiers unfurling the country’s yellow-and-blue flag at a sign marking the city limits. The army “will always have the decisive vote in today’s and any future ‘referendums,’” it added in a pointed reference to the annexation process.
A senior Ukrainian military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Lyman was “already liberated.”
“A mop-up is ongoing,” the official said. “The Russians have nowhere to run.”
The city’s position on the banks of the Siversky Donets river means its recapture by Ukrainian forces would lend them a strategic foothold for further advances east. It also would put additional pressure on the Kremlin, which has been facing blowback at home over its setbacks on the battlefield and the conscription of hundreds of thousands of men to fight in Ukraine.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/live/2022/10/01/world/russia-ukraine-war-news.amp.html
RIVNE, Ukraine — Russian forces withdrew from the strategic eastern city of Lyman on Saturday, just a day after President Vladimir V. Putin’s internationally derided declaration that the region where it lies and three others in Ukraine were now part of Russia.
The battle for Lyman, a city in Donetsk Province with a pre-war population of 20,000, is particularly poorly timed for the Kremlin after it illegally declared its annexation of swaths of Ukraine and Kyiv’s stunning victories in the country’s northeast last month.
Hours after Ukraine’s defense ministry said its forces were entering the city, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said in it had taken the decision to pull out of Lyman.
“In connection with the creation of a threat of encirclement, the allied troops were withdrawn” from the city to a “more advantageous” location, the ministry said in a statement posted on Telegram.
The acknowledgment came after Ukraine’s Defense Ministry posted a video on Twitter showing two soldiers unfurling the country’s yellow-and-blue flag at a sign marking the city limits. The army “will always have the decisive vote in today’s and any future ‘referendums,’” it added in a pointed reference to the annexation process.
A senior Ukrainian military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Lyman was “already liberated.”
“A mop-up is ongoing,” the official said. “The Russians have nowhere to run.”
The city’s position on the banks of the Siversky Donets river means its recapture by Ukrainian forces would lend them a strategic foothold for further advances east. It also would put additional pressure on the Kremlin, which has been facing blowback at home over its setbacks on the battlefield and the conscription of hundreds of thousands of men to fight in Ukraine.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/live/2022/10/01/world/russia-ukraine-war-news.amp.html
