Volodymyr Zelensky, this Monday in Kiev. PRESIDENCY OF UKRAINE (PRESIDENCE OF UKRAINE)
The president of Ukraine does not trust the Russians and does not intend to sell the bear's skin before hunting it.
Volodímir Zelensky has wanted to put the brakes on triumphalism and asks for extreme caution after the Kremlin announced on Wednesday that they are withdrawing from the city of Kherson and the western bank of the Dnieper River.
"The enemy does not give us gifts," he said Wednesday night in his daily address.
In the midst of a certain popular climate of victory and with most analysts stressing that the Russian withdrawal represents an important victory for kyiv, the president and the team that surrounds him want to avoid possible missteps.
Despite everything, they are aware that a withdrawal of the Kremlin troops would mean a very important advance to win one of the key battles of this war.
“Today there is a lot of joy in the information space, and it is clear why.
But our emotions must always be restrained during war”, were his first words.
The president usually leaves comments on strategy and the more technical situation at the front lines to the military.
This time he has not been an exception.
“I definitely will not feed the enemy all the details of our operations.
Whether in the south, in the east, or anywhere else.
When we get a result, everyone will be able to see it.
Sure, ”he commented, sitting in his office and dressed in his traditional short-sleeved khaki shirt in a five-minute intervention.
"Maybe it won't sound like what everyone expects right now, maybe it won't sound like the news," Zelensky added.
Despite everything, the Ukrainian president defended the way in which his soldiers are pressuring the enemy and, he interpreted, that if they back down it is for a reason.
"The enemy does not give us gifts, he does not make gestures of goodwill," he assured.
And he once again put on the table the need not to anticipate events or claim victory: “That is why we move very carefully, without emotions, without unnecessary risks.
In the interest of liberating all of our land and so that there is as little loss as possible."
With the Kherson front in full bloom, the President of Ukraine also sent a direct message "to all those who are making the decisions in this regard in Moscow" and warned them that "blowing up the Kajovka hydroelectric plant, flooding our land and Leaving the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant without water will mean that they are declaring war on the whole world.”
When the Ukrainian army launched a successful counteroffensive in the northeastern Kharkov region two months ago, the kyiv authorities hid the move for the first few days.
Moreover, in a misleading maneuver, according to some analysts, they made it clear that their main objective was going to be to reinforce the Kherson front, in the south of the country.
The local troops recovered Kharkov almost completely and were located at the gates of the Lugansk region, almost entirely dominated by the invaders.
But for more than a month, on this front there have hardly been any significant changes in the positions of one and the other.
Where there have been has been on the western bank of the Dnieper River, where the Ukrainian military have been descending towards the city of Kherson in recent weeks.
Many have braced for hand-to-hand combat through the streets of a city that was supposed to be a treasure trove for Putin's plans to illegally occupy and annex a major part of Ukraine.
The announcement of the withdrawal is interpreted, pending its completion, as yet another blow from kyiv to the pride of what is described as the second largest Army in the world.
The Russians already had to withdraw from the outskirts of kyiv, their main objective at the beginning of the invasion, in the first days of April.
They also failed to strengthen their positions in the urban area of Kharkov, the country's second largest city, and in whose homonymous region they suffered a resounding defeat in September.
And now, Kherson, the only regional capital that they had managed to occupy during the current invasion, since the eastern Lugansk and Donetsk, at war since 2014, were already under their control beforehand.
strategic city
In an unusual dialectic, the head of the Russian troops in Ukraine, Sergei Surovikin, announced on Wednesday that they were choosing to back down to save the lives of their men and maintain their combat capacity.
The news was a bombshell on social networks and immediately jumped to the media around the world.
This step back also received the approval of the Defense Minister himself, Sergei Shoigu, one of the key figures in this war and one of the hawks surrounding President Vladimir Putin.
In recent weeks Zelensky had called on the inhabitants of Kherson to resist, as he has also done on some previous occasions to the Ukrainians living under occupation in other areas of the former Soviet republic.
He assured them, in a message also to the Russians and the rest of the world, that the yellow and blue national flag would fly there again.
But at the same time he was wary of possible retreats that he considered a deception or a trap to lure his troops into the lion's den.
This was the case when, last Friday, the fact that the Russian national flag had ceased to shine on top of the local administration building in that city spread like wildfire.
Kherson occupies a strategic location at the mouth of the Dnieper River, which bisects Ukraine.
Its importance lies in its proximity to the Crimean peninsula, which the Russians have illegally occupied since 2014, and because with this withdrawal there are no longer any invading troops west of the river.
Kherson is also the gateway to the place where the nuclear power plant in the neighboring region of Zaporizhia is located, the largest in Europe and also in Russian hands since the first days of the invasion.
These facilities, a constant scene of combat throughout these more than eight months, are another essential enclave in the war that is taking place in the south of Ukraine.
On September 30, Putin triumphantly announced the annexation of four regions of Ukraine: Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporiya and Kherson.
The occupation authorities had organized illegal referendums there in the previous days to justify these plans.
No one supported the steps of the Russian president.
Not one of his allies has made his strategy official.
Moreover, his own government, only 40 days later, picks up his tanks and leaves a territory that is supposedly Russian.
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