Moscow abandoned its main bastion in northeastern Ukraine on Saturday, in a sudden collapse of one of the war’s main front lines, after a surge of Ukrainian forces threatened to encircle the region in a shock advance. The rapid fall of Izium in Kharkiv province was Moscow’s worst defeat since its troops were forced back from the capital Kyiv in March and could prove a turning point in the six-month war, with thousands of Russian troops running out of ammunition stockpiles and equipment as they fled. The state-run TASS news agency cited the Russian Defense Ministry as saying it had ordered troops to leave the area to bolster operations elsewhere in neighboring Donetsk. The head of the Russian administration in areas in Kharkiv that it controls told all residents to evacuate the province and flee to Russia to “save lives,” TASS reported. Witnesses described traffic jams with people leaving Russian-controlled territory. Ukrainian officials did not confirm they had recaptured Izium, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, released a photo of troops on its outskirts. Earlier, she tweeted a grape emoji. The name of the city means “raisin”. The Russian withdrawal 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. There were signs of trouble for Russia elsewhere along its remaining positions on the eastern front, with pro-Russian officials acknowledging difficulties elsewhere and Ukrainians hinting at more advances ahead.
MECHANICAL ATTACK
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 with the aim of increasing 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. In Hrakove, one of dozens of villages retaken in the Ukrainian advance, Reuters saw burned vehicles bearing the “Z” symbol of the Russian 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 moved in the day before and checked 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 give them the help they need. The next job is to document the crimes committed by Russian invaders in the territories they temporarily occupied.”
“RUSSIA IS BACKING IN”
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 I saw a lot of people from Kupyansk. They say that half of the city has been taken by the Ukrainian army and Russia is retreating… the fighting is coming,” the witness said. Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said officials were providing food and medical aid to people queuing at a crossing into Russia. Senator Andrey Turchak, from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, reported more than 400 vehicles at the border. Russian rockets hit the city of Kharkiv on Saturday night, killing at least one person and damaging several homes, part of an increase in shelling after Kiev counterattacked, Ukrainian officials said. Reuters could not independently confirm accounts on the battlefield. The abrupt abandonment of Russia’s front line south of the city of Kharkiv brought a swift and sudden end to a period in which the war had been 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, Ukrainian 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. (Reporting by Reuters reporters; Writing by Peter Graff and Andrew Heavens; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
