They condense the messages that Russians getting ready to leave Kherson, the only Ukrainian provincial capital they captured during the eight months of the war, which, if confirmed, would be the most painful blow to the Russian military. However, the political and military leadership in Kyiv good news is treated with suspicion, believing that perhaps they are hiding some kind of pernicious trap on the part of the enemy.

In a conversation with young activists on the occasion of yesterday’s National Unity Day, Mr. Vladimir Putin he asked the civilians of Kherson to leave the city, publicly admitting for the first time that the situation had become too difficult for his soldiers. “Now, of course, those who live in Kherson need to be evicted from the zone of the most dangerous operations, because the civilian population should not suffer,” the Russian president said without asking about it.

As of yesterday morning, the Russian flag stopped flying over the building of the Kherson headquarters, whose employees left the city last week and crossed to the other (eastern) bank of the Dnieper. On Wednesday, the Russian-appointed vice-governor of the province of the same name, Kirill Stremusov, said in an interview that it is very likely that the Russian army will also leave the city and gain a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnieper. However, Ukrainian forces spokeswoman Natalya Khumenyuk assessed yesterday that the display of the Russian flag could be a trap. “We are in no hurry to celebrate,” Gumenyuk said, referring to Russian soldiers roaming the city in plain clothes.

According to the Russian news agency RIA, Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing the conscription of persons who have committed serious crimes, with the exception of crimes of a sexual nature, terrorism and espionage. Since September 21, when the President of Russia signed a decree on partial conscription, 318 thousand people have been called up, and many of them are already in combat positions in Ukraine. Former Russian President and now Deputy Chairman of the National Security Council Dmitry Medvedev yesterday criticized those who left the country to avoid military service, calling them “cowards, traitors and deserter opportunists” who “think only of themselves.” In his National Unity Day speech, Medvedev, who once posed as a liberal and modernizer, called the war in Ukraine a holy conflict with Satan, saying that Moscow was fighting “crazy drug-addicted Nazis.”

Zelensky accuses Moscow of energy terrorism, as 4.5 million people were left without electricity.

Meeting in Germany

in Kyiv, Vladimir Zelensky accused Russia of “energy terrorism” due to the ongoing bombing of energy and other infrastructure. “They cannot defeat Ukraine on the battlefield, so they are trying to crush our people in this way,” the Ukrainian president said, adding that 4.5 million of his compatriots were left without electricity. Only in Kyiv, about 450,000 households were left without electricity, said the mayor of the city, Vitali Klitschko. The issue occupied yesterday’s ministerial meeting of the group of seven most powerful Western economies in Münster, Germany, at which it was decided to create a coordination mechanism to assist Ukraine in the rapid restoration and then effective fencing of critical infrastructure, primarily energy and water supply networks.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed with UN Secretary General António Guterres the implementation of the grain deal, asking him to prioritize sending grain to the poorest countries in Africa and Asia. Vladimir Putin has previously raised this issue, lamenting that the vast majority of grain exported from Ukrainian ports goes to wealthy Western countries.