Russian thug and war criminal Putin continues to have a bad week:
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday ordered his troops to withdraw from the occupied Ukrainian city of Kherson and take up defensive lines on the opposite bank of the River Dnipro.
The news followed weeks of Ukrainian advances towards the city and a race by Russia to relocate more than 100,000 of its residents by ferrying them to the opposite side of the river.
The announcement marked one of Russia's most significant retreats and a potential turning point in the war, now nearing the end of its ninth month.
In televised comments, General Sergei Surovikin, in overall command of the war, reported to Shoigu that it was no longer possible to keep Kherson city supplied. [snip]
Kherson is the main city of the region of the same name - one of four Ukrainian regions which President Vladimir Putin proclaimed in September he was incorporating into Russia "forever", and which the Kremlin said had now been placed under Moscow's nuclear umbrella. (our emphasis)
Putin's decision to invade Ukraine is looking more and more like a world- historical catastrophe for Russia. Russians don't like being treated like cannon fodder while being humiliated on the battlefield (see WWI and the collapse of the Romanov Dynasty). With the mobilization and the flight of thousands of Russians to avoid it, combined with the thousands of body bags coming back to Russian towns and smoldering war materiel littering the Ukrainian landscape, a storm has been brewing ever since Putin's "special military operation" began getting its ass kicked from one end of Ukraine to the other.
One can also imagine him wondering why Russian 2022 election meddling (and its ultimate beneficiary, the Malignant Loser) looks like a similar failure. No American Putin riding to the rescue!
(Photo: all helmet, no military Pooty/ Brookings Institution)
