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(CNN Spanish) --
Two and a half months after the start of Ukraine's counteroffensive in the south, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu ordered Russian forces to withdraw from Kherson on Wednesday - the first city captured since the beginning of the war in February—, according to Russian state media.
The withdrawal of Russian troops, which would be deployed across the Dnieper River, has not yet materialized, and Ukrainian officials have urged caution against Moscow's announcements.
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"We have said it many times and we will repeat it: all information has to be viewed critically," said Natalia Humeniuk, spokeswoman for the Ukrainian Armed Forces Southern Operational Command.
"We do not rule out provocation. We see that words do not match actions. We continue with the defense operation and counter-offensive actions that were planned earlier," he added.
While Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said that they saw no signs that Russia was leaving Kherson.
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Ukraine "is liberating territories based on intelligence data, not on staged television statements," he said.
But although Kherson is not yet liberated from Russian occupation, Ukrainian troops continue to advance towards the city from two directions, and partial withdrawals of Russian troops have been seen in the region, which was even celebrated by the secretary general of the NATO, Jens Stoltenberg.
And if indeed Kherson, the first city occupied by Russia and the only regional capital —of the oblast of my name— held by Moscow, comes back under the control of Kyiv, it will mean a central turn in the war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian troops raise the flag over a building in Vysokopillya, in the southern Kherson region, last month.
(Credit: Andriy Yermak/Twitter)
Why Kherson is important
With a population of about 280,000 before the start of the war, Kherson, capital of the oblast – or region – of the same name, is the second largest Ukrainian city held by Russia, after Mariupol.
It was captured on March 1, less than a week into the war, and Ukraine has sought to recapture it ever since.
The city is of enormous geopolitical importance: it is located in the south of Ukraine, about 90 kilometers from the Crimean peninsula - annexed by Russia in 2014 - and on the mouth of the Dnieper River, the most important in Ukraine.
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It also houses an important port with access to the Black Sea, which is a body of water historically linked to the interests of Russia.
Since the beginning of the war, Russia has tried to strengthen its control over the strip of Ukrainian territory from Kherson to the Russian border, forming a land corridor that allows it to connect with Crimea, and in it also appear the cities of Niova Karkhovka, Melitopol, Berdyansk and Mariupol.
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In this regard, Russia held at the end of September a series of controversial referendums in the oblast of Kherson and Zaporizhia, in the south, and Donetsk and Luhansk, in the east, to put to a vote a possible annexation of these territories by Russia. .
Ukraine, the United Nations, the European Union, and most countries in the world rejected the legitimacy of these referendums conducted under military occupation and effectively at gunpoint.
Russia, however, went ahead with it anyway, announcing that the annexation had won overwhelmingly and then formally annexing the territories, a fact unknown to most of the world.
Thus, Kherson has become, from Moscow's perspective, part of Russia's territory, which heightens the significance of a possible abandonment of the region, if it materializes.
How did you get to this point?
Between August 29 and September 7, the Ukrainian troops launched two major counteroffensives to try to recover part of the territory lost after the Russian invasion on February 24.
The first, in the south, focused on the city of Kherson, while the second, in the north, took place on the outskirts of Kharkiv and moved east.
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The offensive toward Kherson, anticipated by weeks both by Ukrainian preparations and by announcements, proceeded slowly from the start in the face of stiff Russian resistance.
In the north, however, the attack was surprising and enormously successful, with Ukrainian troops liberating a large number of towns, including the city of Lyman.
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For the next two and a half months, Ukrainian troops continued to advance slowly but steadily south and toward the city of Kherson, threatening Russian forces with encirclement.
Ukraine surprised Russia and the world with its ability to mount two counteroffensives —partially successful in both cases—, in the midst of a war that has devastated much of the country and in which the disparity of forces against it is notable.
And since then the world has been watching for a possible response from Russia.
In part, that response manifested itself in increased attacks on energy infrastructure and civilian targets in Ukraine, using its air force, cruise and ballistic missile arsenals, and, more recently, drones.
But a large Russian ground movement in Ukraine is still expected, beyond some limited assaults in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and while awaiting the readiness of newly mobilized soldiers in the country.
With information from Tim Lister, Julia Kesaieva, Olga Voitovych, Simone McCarthy, Katharina Krebs, Radina Gigova, Simone McCarthy, Sana Noor Haq
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