The head of the Russian administration of the Kherson region admits that Ukraine has established positions on the left bank of the Dnieper
“About one Pursue and a half [de soldats ukrainiens]distributed in small groups, located on a section from the railway bridge [au village de] Krynky,” Vladimir Saldo, the head of authorities appointed by Moscow in the occupied part of the Kherson region, said in a long Telegram post on Wednesday. He is the first Russian official to admit that Ukrainian forces managed to cross the Dnieper to the left bank.
“The enemy managed to completely cross the border by sending for a time more people than our means of destruction could destroy,” he wrote in his report, adding that “the enemy had already lost at the border crossing and on the left bank ..” at least one or two full-fledged battalions and that the average life expectancy of a Ukrainian soldier on the Left Bank is just over two days.
However, Mr. Saldo tried to downplay the significance of this Ukrainian move, claims that the Russian army is causing “a hell of a fire.” » to the Ukrainian soldiers present on the shore who are “blocked in Krynky” and that “everyone [les] In the meantime, additional forces have been mobilized.
A company can consist of several dozen or hundreds of soldiers, according to the military glossary of the Russian news agency TASS.
Ukrainian troops hold for a year the city of Kherson and the right bank of the Dnieper, opposite the Russian army, on the left bank, which still occupies part of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.
When Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was asked on Monday about reports that Ukraine was consolidating its positions on the left bank of the river in the hope of breaking through Russian lines, he declined to comment, believing it was up to the Russian army was to comment on the situation.
Since late October, the Ukrainian army has managed to entrench troops on the occupied banks of the Dnieper, particularly in the village of Krynky in the southern Kherson region, according to Russian and Ukrainian bloggers and experts who analyzed open source information. A little earlier, the two news agencies RIA Novosti and TASS had announced a Russian withdrawal from the Dnieper region in almost identical words, but withdrew this information citing an “error”.