Russian forces withdraw from a strategic city of Donetsk a day after Moscow's annexation of the region

Why did Putin annex a region of Ukraine to Russia?

3:16

(CNN) --

Russian forces have withdrawn from Lyman, a strategic city for their operations in the east, Russia's Defense Ministry reported Saturday, just a day after Moscow's annexation of the region was declared illegal. by the West.

“In connection with creating an encirclement threat, the allied troops withdrew from the Krasny Liman settlement towards more advantageous lines,” the ministry said on Telegram, using the Russian name for the city of Lyman.

Russian state media Russia-24 reported that the reason for Russia's withdrawal was because "the enemy used both Western-made artillery and intelligence from the North Atlantic alliance countries."

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The pullout marks Ukraine's most significant gain since its successful counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region last month.

Russia's announcement comes just hours after Ukrainian forces said they had surrounded Russian troops in the town, which is in the Kramatorsk district of Donetsk.

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Ukrainian forces said Saturday that they had entered Stavky, a town neighboring Lyman, according to Serhii Cherevatyi, the military spokesman for the eastern grouping of Ukrainian forces.

“The Russian group in the Lyman area is surrounded.

Yampil, Novoselivka, Shandryholove, Drobysheve and Stavky settlements are liberated.

Stabilization measures are ongoing there," Cherevatyi said at a televised news conference on Saturday morning.

“[The release] of Lyman is important, because it is another step towards the liberation of the Ukrainian Donbas.

This is an opportunity to go beyond Kreminna and Severodonetsk.

Therefore, in turn, psychologically it is very important, ”he stated.

Cherevatyi said that the actions of the Ukrainian troops set the tone for "breaking the course of these hostilities."

He added that there were "many dead and wounded", but could not give more details.

The head of the Luhansk regional military administration, Serhiy Hayday, also revealed more details of the Lyman offensive on Saturday, suggesting that Russian forces offered to withdraw, but to no avail on Ukraine's part.

“The occupants asked [their command] for the possibility of withdrawing, and they have been denied.

Consequently, they have two options.

No, actually they have three options.

Try to break through, give up, or everyone will die,” Hayday said.

There are several thousand of them.

Yes, about 5,000.

There is no exact number yet.

5,000 is still a colossal grouping.

There has never been such a large group on the fence before.

All routes for ammunition supply or group withdrawal are completely blocked,” he added.

Footage obtained by CNN shows Ukrainian forces controlling rural areas of Donetsk around the disputed town of Lyman.

Yurii Mysiagin, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and deputy head of the parliament's national security committee, made reference to the move to Stavky on Saturday by posting a video on Telegram showing a Ukrainian tank moving along the road with a clear sign indicating the region. of Stavky.

CNN was unable to independently verify the original source or date.

A video posted on social media and shared by the president's chief of staff Volodymyr Zelensky shows two Ukrainian soldiers standing in a military vehicle taping the flag to a large banner with the word "Lyman."

“We unfurled the flag of our country and planted it on our land.

About Lyman.

Everything will be Ukraine”, says one of the soldiers to the camera.

Meanwhile, pressure appears to be mounting on Russian President Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield.

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Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of the Chechen republic, in an angry statement criticizing Russian generals after Lyman's withdrawal, said it was time for the Kremlin to use all the weapons at its disposal.

"In my personal opinion, we must take more drastic measures, including the declaration of martial law in the border territories and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons," Kadyrov said on his Telegram channel.

“There is no need to make every decision with the Western American community in mind.”

Earlier this week, Dmitry Medvedev, who served as Russia's president from 2008 to 2012, spoke about the use of nuclear weapons on his Telegram channel, saying it was permissible if the existence of the Russian state was threatened by attack. even by conventional forces.

“If the threat to Russia exceeds our established threat limit, we will have to respond…this is certainly not a hoax,” he wrote.

Indeed, concerns that Moscow may resort to the use of nuclear weapons have risen sharply after Putin proclaimed on Friday that Russia would seize nearly a fifth of Ukraine, declaring that the millions of people living there would be Russian citizens. forever".

The announcement was dismissed as illegal by the United States and many other countries, but the fear is that the Kremlin could argue that attacks on those territories now constitute attacks on Russia.

In his speech in the Kremlin, the Russian leader made only passing reference to nuclear weapons, noting that the United States was the only country to use them on the battlefield.

"By the way, they created a precedent," he added.

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Nuclear power plant chief arrested

Also on Saturday, the general director of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant was detained by a Russian patrol, according to the president of the state nuclear company Energoatom.

General Director Ihor Murashov was in his car on his way to the plant when he was “arrested…taken out of the car and blindfolded and driven in an unknown direction.

At the moment there is no information about the fate of him,” Energoatom's Petro Kotin said in a statement.

"Murashov is a licensed person and has primary and sole responsibility for the nuclear and radiological safety of the Zaporizhia NPP," Kotin said, adding that his detention "jeopardizes the safety of the Ukrainian operation and the plant." Europe's largest nuclear power plant.

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Kotin called for Murashov's release and urged the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to "take all possible immediate steps to release him urgently."

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry "strongly" condemned the "illegal detention" of Murashov, calling it "another manifestation of state terrorism by Russia and a serious violation of international law."

"We call on the international community, in particular the UN, the IAEA and the G7, to also take decisive action to this end," the ministry said in a statement.

And in Kharkiv, the regional prosecutor's office said on Saturday that the bodies of 22 civilians, including 10 children, were found after the Russian shelling of a convoy of cars near the eastern city of Kupiansk.

The Russian military fired on the cars on September 25 "as civilians were trying to evacuate," it said in a Telegram post, adding that an investigation is underway.

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The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the police had "discovered a convoy of seven cars that had been shot to death near the village of Kurylivka, Kupiansk district," the Kharkiv regional prosecutor's office said.

The SBU confirmed on Telegram that they would be investigating a "war crime" in which at least 20 people were killed in "a brutal attack."

CNN was unable to independently verify the allegations.

There has been no official Russian response to the claims made.

CNN's Darya Tarasova, Josh Pennington and Zayn Nabbi contributed reporting.