The summary beginning below is by the Berkshire Eagle’s foreign affairs columnist, who as a journalist was based for about 14 years in Moscow and then Kyiv. — MCM

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Defeats define Russia’s army

By James Brooke | The Berkshire Eagle

Russia’s army is being defined by successive defeats in the “three K’s”: Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson.

Last spring, Ukraine’s army and civilian volunteers stymied President Putin’s plan to decapitate Ukraine’s government in three days. The invaders were not only stopped at Kyiv’s northern suburbs, but expelled back to Belarus.

Turning on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Russian forces shelled relentlessly, damaging or destroying a quarter of the housing stock in a city of 1.4 million. Ukrainians dug in their heels. By October, the invaders were expelled from the region.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin took to a stage in Red Square in Moscow and declared that Kherson and three other regions in Ukraine would be part of Russia “forever.”

But on Wednesday, as Ukrainian soldiers gradually tightened the noose on Kherson City, the only provincial capital seized in the war, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered on television a retreat east across the Dnipro River. A retreat would mean that the Kremlin also has given up plans to take the key Black Sea ports of Odesa and Mykolaiv.

Former Kremlin advisor Sergei Markov calls the decision to leave Kherson “Russia’s biggest geopolitical defeat since the collapse of the USSR.” WarGonzo, a pro-war Telegram account, told its 1.3 million mostly Russian subscribers that the announced withdrawal is “a black page in the history of the Russian army. Of the Russian state.”

Chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley estimated Wednesday that Russia has up to 30,000 troops in and around Kherson City. He said: “This is going to take them days and perhaps even weeks to pull those forces south of that river.”

Ukrainian officials say that some Russian soldiers in Kherson City have changed into civilian clothes. Following a strategy adopted by the Red Army in World War II, retreating Russian soldiers have mined apartments and sewers.

Fearing a trap, Ukrainian soldiers are moving cautiously. On Thursday, they liberated 12 rural settlements, about 60 square miles.

After eight months of Russian occupation, Ukrainian collaborator are losing confidence in their future. The collaborationist administration has relocated to Skadovsk, a lowkey port city with a prewar population of 17,000.

When I vacationed there with my family two years ago, I found a peeling Black Sea resort town with a port that received only one ship that year. The Kyiv government was trying to sell the port to a Turkish buyer.

For fleeing pro-Russian administrators, Skadovsk has a big advantage. It is the closest port to Russia-controlled Crimea, about a one-hour motorboat trip across a normally placid gulf.

One administrator, Kirill Stremousov, won’t make it. On Wednesday morning, Kyrill Stremousov, deputy head of the Russian-installed regional administration, announced on his Telegram channel that the Russian military was in “full control” of Kherson. Hours later, Russian officials announced that Stremousov was killed in a car crash. President Putin quickly granted him the Order of Courage.

But there is more to Kherson Region than Kherson City.

Ukrainians face a tough fight to regain control of Kherson, a region slightly larger than Turkey. Since the 1960s, the eastern part of the region has supplied Dnipro River water to Crimea, the semi-arid peninsula jutting out into the Black Sea. Constructed from 1957 to 1963, the 250-mile long canal was hailed at the time as one of the “great construction projects of communism.’

In 2014, at the time of Russia’s takeover of Crimea, the canal was supplying as much as 85 percent of Crimea’s water. Since then, Putin stationed tens of thousands of troops on the peninsula, but did not invest in desalinization plants to obtain drinking water from the Black Sea.

Equally important to the Kremlin, Kherson region is a key part of a “land bridge” from Russia to Crimea. A 250-mile east-west road connects two Ukrainian regions controlled by Russian since 2014 — Donetsk and Crimea.

To circumvent Ukrainian control of this land route, Putin ordered the construction of a 10-mile, $3.7 billion road and rail bridge connecting Russia’s mainland with Crimea. Passing over the Kerch Strait, the bridge was personally inaugurated by President Putin on May 15, 2018.

On Oct. 8 . . . READ MORE . . .