Moscow abandoned its main bastion in northeastern Ukraine on Saturday, in a sudden collapse on one of the war’s main battle lines, after Ukrainian forces threatened to encircle the region in a shock advance. The state-run TASS news agency cited the Russian Defense Ministry as saying it had ordered troops out of the area of the city of Izium in Kharkiv province, saying they would be sent to bolster operations elsewhere in neighboring Donetsk. The announcement came hours after Ukrainian troops captured the town of Kupiansk further north, the only rail hub that supplies Russia’s entire front line across northeastern Ukraine. This has left thousands of Russian troops cut off from supplies in a section of the front that has seen some of the heaviest fighting of the war. The swift fall of Izium was Moscow’s worst defeat since its troops were forced back from the capital Kyiv in March and could prove to be a turning point in the six-month war, with thousands of Russian soldiers abandoning ammunition and equipment stocks. . they leave. There were signs of trouble for Russia elsewhere along its remaining frontline positions in the east, with pro-Russian officials acknowledging difficulties elsewhere and Ukrainians hinting at more advances to come. Days ago, Kiev forces broke through the front line and have since recaptured dozens of towns and villages in a rapid mechanized offensive, advancing tens of kilometers a day. Early on Saturday, Ukrainian officials released pictures of their troops raising the country’s blue and yellow flag in front of the town hall in Kupiansk, dealing a blow that appeared to prove decisive for Russian garrisons supplied by the city’s railways. “To achieve the stated goals of the Special Military Operation for the Liberation of Donbas, it was decided to regroup Russian troops located in the Balakliia and Izium regions in order to increase efforts in the direction of Donetsk,” TASS said, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. as it says. The Russian forces had already left Balaklia days ago. Ukrainian officials did not confirm they had recaptured Izium, but President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak posted a grape emoji. The word “Izium” means “raisin” in Ukrainian and Russian. In Hrakove, one of dozens of villages retaken in the Ukrainian advance, Reuters saw burned vehicles bearing the “Z” symbol of Russia’s invasion. Boxes still full of ammunition littered positions the Russians had abandoned in apparent haste. “Hi everyone, we’re from Russia,” was spray-painted on a wall. Three bodies lay in white bags in a yard. The regional police chief, Volodymyr Tymoshenko, said Ukrainian police had moved in the day before and had been checking the identities of residents of the area who had been living under Russian occupation since the second day of the invasion. “The first function is to provide help that they need. The next job is to record the crimes committed by Russian invaders in the territories they temporarily occupied.” A witness in Valuyki, a town in Russia’s Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine, told Reuters she saw many people from Kupiansk, with families eating and sleeping in their cars along the roads. “I was in the market today and saw many people from Kupiansk. They say half the city has been captured by the Ukrainian army and Russia is retreating… the fighting is coming,” the witness said. The abrupt abandonment of the Russian front line south of Kharkiv was the biggest transformation of the battlefield since the collapse of Russia’s initial attack on Kyiv. It brought a quick and sudden end to a period in which the war was fought as a relentless grind on a static front, favoring Moscow’s advantage in raw firepower. Russian forces had fought hard to capture Izium early in the war and then used the city as a logistics base for one of their main campaigns – a months-long offensive from the north into the adjacent Donbas region. There were signs that Ukraine could capitalize on the disarray by attacking other areas of the eastern front. Denis Pushilin, head of Russia’s separatist administration in Donetsk province, said the situation in Liman, east of Izium, “remains quite difficult – as in a number of settlements in the north of the republic”. Further east in Ukraine, officials hinted at a possible attempt to retake Lysychansk, which Moscow captured in July after weeks of fighting in one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Ukrainian regional governor Serhiy Gaidai told Ukrainian media that Ukrainian troops were spotted on the outskirts of the city. The city’s name means “fox,” and after his grape tweet, Yermak tweeted a fox emoji.
