The Russian troops’ withdrawal from the Ukrainian city of Kherson is their most humiliating setback since the retreat from Kyiv back in April—and a potential turning point in the war, now in its ninth month.
With the pullback, which Russian military leaders announced Wednesday on national television, Vladimir Putin’s army no longer holds any regional capital in all of Ukraine.
The Kherson region is one of four—along with Luhansk, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia—that Putin claimed to annex in late September. The fact that his troops are now abandoning Kherson’s capital, which is also home to a major southern port, dramatizes the hollowness of the Russian president’s imperial ambitions.
But the withdrawal is more than merely symbolic. Once complete, it will leave Russia with no serious military presence west of the Dnieper river, which has long been seen as a dividing line between the western stretches of Ukraine, where people see themselves as European, and the eastern regions, which are populated more with ethnic Russians.
It also signifies the further unraveling of Putin’s army in Ukraine. Pushed back to the eastern banks of the Dnieper, his commanders no longer have a foothold from which they can once again attack the central or western part of the country. Theoretically, after a pause, they might launch another offensive across the Dnieper. But given their losses in manpower and weapons, the disintegration of their units, the incompetence of the new draftees, and Russia’s inability to produce new tanks (because sanctions prevent them from importing crucial components), holding a defensive line is about all the army can manage. Going on the offensive seems beyond its power.
Mark Galeotti, author of Putin’s Wars and many other books about the Russian military, said in an email Thursday, “I don’t see any scope for significant [offensive] operations, probably even after the spring,” when they will have formed and supplied new combat units.
According to U.S. intelligence reports, Putin’s officers had been urging him to retreat from Kherson since September. Ukrainian attacks were corroding Russian supply lines, and once the lines were severed entirely, the troops—bereft of ammunition, food, and other necessities—would be doomed.
Finally, this week, Putin bowed to reality and acceded to the officers’ request. However, he dissociated himself personally from the retreat, leaving his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the chief commander in Ukraine, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, to announce the move. While they were explaining on Russian television why the defense of Kherson was no longer possible, the Russian president was publicly touring a new hospital in Moscow. Still, the defense ministry made it clear that Putin had made the decision, announcing in its daily briefing that the retreat—which involved moving about 40,000 troops eastward—was “in strict accordance with the approved plan.”
However, the withdrawal does not mean the war is anywhere close to ending. Moving the troops east of the Dnieper—where Russia still controls much of the territory—allows commanders to redeploy them northward, say to the Donbas region, where fighting is still intense.
Russia still has plenty of missiles and other munitions that they can fire into Ukrainian cities, where a recent spate of attacks has terrorized the civilian population. In some cases, they have deliberately targeted electric power stations, turning out the lights in Kyiv. In other cases, they have simply fired missiles indiscriminately (their supply of accurate munitions is very limited), destroying apartments, playgrounds, and other areas having no military value.
Putin seems to be playing a long game, hoping that the terror-strikes, combined with a cold winter and the cutoff of energy supplies from Russia, might pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his European allies to call for a cease-fire.
This seems like a pipe dream. The recent attacks have only hardened Zelensky’s—and most Ukrainians’—determination to keep fighting. And European leaders have been resourceful in finding alternative supplies of oil and gas—though some are worried about how long patience can hold out, not just in Europe but in the United States. (The results of the midterm elections have abated some of these fears, as the “red wave,” which could have strengthened the hands of MAGA unilateralists, failed to materialize.)
Biden administration officials have recently reassured Zelensky of America’s unyielding support—national security adviser Jake Sullivan flew to Kyiv last week to deliver that message—but they have also pushed the Ukrainian president to appear at least willing in principle to stop the war. On Monday, as a result of this prodding, Zelensky announced that he would hold peace negotiations if Russia agreed to five preconditions: That they would restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity, respect U.N. resolutions on the war, pay to repair all damages caused by the war, punish war criminals, and guarantee that an invasion won’t happen again.
Noticeably missing from this list is a demand—which was part of an earlier, otherwise similar announcement—that Putin leave office. Zelensky signed a decree in October stating that Ukraine will never negotiate with Putin, though left open the possibility of holding talks with Putin’s successor. Given that Putin’s primary motive is to stay in power, this in effect put diplomacy off the table. The fact that the new demands say nothing about Putin’s fate retrieves the prospect of diplomacy from oblivion.
The prospects are still very dim. It is extremely unlikely that Putin would concede to any of Zelensky’s current five demands. But to an outside observer, the conditions at least seem reasonable. They hoist Zelensky to the high ground of any moral equation; they allow wavering supporters of Ukraine to conclude that he is interested in a diplomatic solution to the war.
If Putin were suddenly to become open to peace talks, his troop withdrawal from Kherson would facilitate the possibility. If both sides agreed someday to a cease-fire, the Dnieper river would be a natural line of demarcation—clear, unambiguous, and easily monitored. The line could also serve as the starting point of a peace negotiation. But, again, neither side seems quite ready for that: Zelensky thinks he’s winning; Putin thinks he’s not yet losing. The war seems likely to drag on for quite a while longer.
