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Russia’s military leadership has evacuated its officers from the Russian-annexed city of Kherson across the Dnieper River in response to a Ukrainian army advance, the Institute for War think tank said on Sunday.
It added that Moscow had left freshly mobilized, inexperienced troops across the wide river in order to delay the Ukrainian counteroffensive while the Russians completed their retreat.
The troop movement came as the Ukrainian military said its forces continued their counteroffensive in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.
On Saturday, the Russian-established authorities in Ukraine told all Kherson residents to leave immediately before Ukrainian troops move to reclaim the city.
Kherson has been in Russian hands since the start of Ukraine’s eight-month war. The city, the capital of the region of the same name, is one of four that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last month and placed under Russia’s martial law on Thursday.
Ukrainian troops bombed Russian positions across the province on Friday, targeting the supply routes of pro-Kremlin forces across the Dnieper River in a last-ditch effort to retake the city.
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The ISW think-tank also said on Sunday that Russia’s latest war strategy against power plants in recent days appeared to be aimed at weakening Ukrainians’ willingness to fight and forcing the Ukrainian government to spend more resources on protecting civilians and energy infrastructure. It said the effort was unlikely to damage Ukrainian morale, but would have a significant economic impact.
The Ukrainian military said on Sunday that Russian forces were now largely on the defensive, but continued offensive attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and several towns in the eastern Donbass region.
Attacks on energy and other critical infrastructure have been repeated in nine regions of Ukraine in the past day, from Odessa in the southwest to Kharkiv in the northeast, the Ukrainian General Staff said. In total, Russia reportedly carried out 25 airstrikes and more than 100 missile and artillery strikes on Ukraine.
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