Ukraine: Russia's withdrawal from Kherson will take at least a week

Ukraine: Russia's withdrawal from Kherson will take at least a week

Nov 12 2022

ARK News… Ukraine's defense minister on Thursday said that it would take at least a week for Russia to withdraw its forces from the southern city of Kherson and that winter would slow operations on the battlefield, giving both sides a chance to regroup.

In an interview in Kyiv, Aleksey Reznikov said Russia has 40,000 troops in the Kherson region and still has troops in and around the city and on the right bank of the Dnepr River.

"It is not easy to withdraw these forces from Kherson in a day or two ... (it will take) at least a week," he told Reuters news agency, acknowledging the difficulty of predicting Russia's actions.

Russia announced on Wednesday that it would withdraw from the western bank of the Dnepr River, which includes Kherson, the only regional capital Moscow has captured since the invasion of Ukraine in February.

Reznikov said that this withdrawal would allow the forces of both sides to devote themselves to fighting in other places.

He added that Ukraine had a security and defense force of one million people to guard the 2,500 km "unfriendly" border with Belarus, Russia, and the occupied Ukrainian regions.

Reznikov played down the threat of a Russian nuclear attack in his country and ruled out the possibility of Moscow blowing up the large southern Kakhovka Dam during its withdrawal, describing the idea as "madness."

He said that this step would lead to the flooding of areas controlled by Moscow and also prevent their access to fresh water supplies through a channel from Dnepr to Crimea.

"The West Bank is high land and the East Bank is low... This means that the water will flow east of this bank and there will be a danger to their forces," he added.

Both sides of the war accused each other of plotting to destroy the dam.

When asked whether Moscow's methods had changed under the command of General Sergei Surovkin of the Russian army, Reznikov said, "Yes, he has changed because he is using terrorist methods against civilians and infrastructure targets using cruise missiles, rockets, drones, and Iranian private drones."

Moscow appointed Surovkin in October to command its forces in Ukraine.

"They do not send one or two missiles to Ukraine as before, but they use 40 missiles a day and then wait, then bomb them again and again," Reznikov added.

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