In Retreat on Ukrainian Fronts, Russia Shows Signs of Disarray – The New York Times – 03.10.22
Michael Julien- Oct 4, 2022
- 3 min read
Confusion and recriminations marked the Russian efforts to call up draftees and claim sovereignty over Ukrainian territory, as well as the Russian response to battlefield setbacks.
IZIUM, Ukraine — Russian forces in Ukraine were on the run Monday across a broad swath of the front line, as the Ukrainian military pressed its blitz offensive in the east and made gains in the south, belying President Vladimir V. Putin’s claims to have absorbed into Russia territories that his armies are steadily losing.
Following the capture over the weekend of Lyman, a strategic rail hub and gateway to the eastern Donbas region, Ukrainian forces showed no sign of stopping, pushing eastward toward the city of Lysychansk, which Russia seized three months ago after bloody fighting. Any loss of territory in the Donbas undermines Mr. Putin’s objectives for the war he launched in February, which has focused on seizing and incorporating the region.
The Kremlin reflected the disarray of its forces on the ground, where territory was rapidly changing hands, acknowledging that it did not yet know what new borders Russia would claim in southern Ukraine. “In terms of the borders, we’re going to continue to consult with the population of these regions,” Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters on Monday.
The military conscription Mr. Putin ordered on Sept. 21 to bolster his battered forces has set off nationwide turmoil and protest, bringing the war home to many Russians who had felt untouched by it. Many men have been drafted who were supposed to be ineligible based on factors like age or disability.
On Monday, the governor of the Khabarovsk region in the Far East said that half of the men called up there, numbering in the thousands, should not have been drafted and had been sent home and that the region’s military commissar had been dismissed.
Mr. Putin had meant for Monday to be a triumphant day in Moscow, where the lower house of Russia’s rubber-stamp Parliament, the State Duma, voted unanimously to ratify his proclaimed annexation of four Ukrainian regions after sham referendums there.
But events on the battlefield threatened to make a mockery of such declarations, as Ukrainians continued to recapture blasted, largely depopulated cities and towns from the retreating Russians.
North of Lyman, the village of Pisky-Radkivski, retaken last week, was littered with burned-out Russian tanks, abandoned Russian gear and the bodies of Russian soldiers on Monday.
For the full nine page report in pdf, please click here:
Andrew E. Kramer reported from Izium, Ukraine, Carlotta Gall from Pisky-Radkivski, Ukraine, and Anton Troianovski from Berlin. Reporting was contributed by Michael Schwirtz from Kyiv, Valerie Hopkins from Berlin, Maria Varenikova from Izium, Eric Schmitt from Washington and Oleksandr Chubko from Pisky-Radkivski.
Andrew E. Kramer is a reporter covering the countries of the former Soviet Union. He was part of a team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for a series on Russia’s covert projection of power. @AndrewKramerNYT
Carlotta Gall is the Istanbul bureau chief, covering Turkey. She previously covered the aftershocks of the Arab Spring from Tunisia, reported from the Balkans during the war in Kosovo and Serbia, and covered Afghanistan and Pakistan. @carlottagall • Facebook
Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times. He was previously Moscow bureau chief of The Washington Post and spent nine years with The Wall Street Journal in Berlin and New York. @antontroian
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 4, 2022, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Russia Retreats As Troops Show Signs of Turmoil. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Please also see this article in pdf by Colonel Richard Kemp for the Telegraph:
A photograph taken during a Ukraine government-arranged tour for journalists showing Ukrainian soldiers in the town of Oskil, in eastern Ukraine, on Monday. Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times
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