Good morning.
The Ukrainian city of Kherson has been under Russian occupation since the start of the war in February. That was the case until earlier this week when Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, ordered his troops to withdraw from the west bank of the Dnipro river, an area that includes Kherson city, as they were at risk of encirclement.
Ukrainian troops have been capturing villages on the way to Kherson for weeks, so the retreat is a significant win for Kyiv in the battle for the south of the country. However, Ukrainian officials have cautioned against celebrating too soon, and remain sceptical as to whether Russian forces have actually left the area. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said: “The enemy does not give us gifts, does not make goodwill gestures, we win it all.”
Regardless of how tentative the situation is, Russia’s purported withdrawal is one of the biggest moments in the war since Ukraine’s offensive in Kharkiv in September. It’s both a symbolic and tactical defeat. I spoke to Peter Beaumont, a senior foreign correspondent at the Guardian, about what this retreat means for the future of the war. That’s right after the headlines.
Five big stories
Politics | Kwasi Kwarteng has said that he told Liz Truss to “slow down” her economic plans. The ex-chancellor has also criticised Truss for dismissing him six weeks into the job for not implementing her tax cutting agenda.
Strikes | The UK is set to face a new wave of strikes as civil servants and train drivers vote for industrial action. Nearly 100,000 civil servants from multiple government departments have voted to strike because of disputes over pay, pensions and job security.
Democracy | Officials have warned government ministers that if they do not delay their plans to roll out mandatory voter ID checks in May 2023’s local elections, thousands of people could become disfranchised, inevitably swaying some results.
Education | Teachers have said that children who are not eligible for free school meals are coming to school with mouldy bread, empty wraps and sometimes with nothing at all. These accounts come as analysis by the Liberal Democrats found that 100,000 children in England may be missing out on free school meals.
Germany | The fast food chain KFC has apologised after sending a message to German customers that encouraged them to commemorate Kristallnacht, the 1938 anti-Jewish pogrom, with fried chicken and melted cheese.
In depth: ‘This is a moment for optimism’
Russian billboards in Kherson that read “Russia is here forever” are an embarrassing reminder of the Kremlin’s hubris at the start of the war. The announcement that Russia’s troops will be pulled out of the city is a decisive moment in Ukraine’s counter-offensive which started at the end of August. But how did Russia get to this point – and what’s next?
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What has happened so far
Things have not been going well for Russia for a while. In September, Ukraine launched a stunning military offensive that liberated the north-eastern region of Kharkiv. Since then, Russia has suffered a series of losses as Ukrainian forces advance in the south of the country. The total number of Russian military casualties in this war has exceeded the number of deaths during the country’s war in Afghanistan. For context, Afghanistan was a 10-year war; Russia has been in Ukraine for less than a year. Russia’s conscripts have had to buy their own armour and clothing, and the army has been losing 10 tanks a day on average since early September.
Ukrainian troops have also been gaining ground, liberating villages in the region and moving towards the west bank of the Dnipro, leaving Russian forces vulnerable and exposed. This is all while political discontent grows on the home front in Russia.
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Why is Kherson important?
A port city bordering Crimea, it gave Russia access to the Black Sea peninsula and provided a crucial land corridor to the annexed region. Before the war, the lack of land access to Crimea spurred Putin to spend $4bn building the Crimean Bridge across the Kerch Strait (the bridge was damaged in an explosion in early October). In the early phases of the invasion, troops based in Crimea flooded to south Ukraine through Kherson. The city was Moscow’s only major foothold in that region of the country; without it Russian troops could be surrounded.
There is also a canal in the city that was blocked by Ukraine in 2014 from providing fresh water to Crimea, which cost the Kremlin hundreds of millions of dollars. Upon seizing the city earlier this year, Russia unblocked the canal. No doubt it will be blocked again soon.
But despite this strategic importance, Russia has had to retreat because Ukraine’s offensives in the other parts of the country have meant that its military capacity has been stretched: “The nature of the position of Kherson and the continuing ability of the Ukrainians to disrupt important Russian logistics meant that they were genuinely in danger of having a lot of troops stuck on the wrong side of the Dnipro river, which is why it makes military sense for them to reorganise and withdraw,” Peter says. “But politically this is humiliating. This was the only major regional capital that the Russians held, and now they are preparing to give it up.”
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The next phase
Despite Russia’s announcement, Ukrainian officials are wary of rushing into what could feasibly be a trap. Instead, they have continued with their offensive operation of closing in from all corners. Just yesterday Ukrainian troops captured a key town north-west of Kherson and are reportedly nearing the outskirts of the city.
Peter explains that this withdrawal “has not happened, it is happening”, so it may take a while for Russian forces to clear out. Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said it would take at least a week for Russia to completely pull out of Kherson, adding that Moscow still has 40,000 troops in the region.
Either way, Ukrainian officials have said that they are potentially days away from entering the city. If (or when depending on who you speak to) they do capture Kherson, Putin will probably retaliate in a brutal way by escalating his bombardment on energy and water infrastructure which would have devastating effects as Ukraine heads into winter. “Ukraine is an extremely cold country, and leaving people without heat and light will have deadly consequences,” Peter says. This defeat will also likely further erode Putin’s popularity in Russia, which has been declining since the introduction of the controversial partial mobilisation.
However humiliating this moment may be for Russia, there is no indication that the war will end any time soon. This is likely a tactic to regroup and train up more soldiers to put Russia’s army in a better position by the end of the winter. “This is a moment for optimism but my thought is that the war is going to last a while yet,” Peter says.
What else we’ve been reading
What happens when a council outsources all its services? Barnet found out – and unsurprisingly it was a disaster, as John Harris explains in excruciating detail. Toby Moses, head of newsletters
The world of cryptocurrency seems to be in a constant state of crisis. The latest update is that a crisis at FTX, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, has sent the digital market crashing. Dan Milmo and Alex Hern untangle this complicated story. Nimo
This year’s John Lewis ad (above) is almost guaranteed to draw a tear from even the most hardened ducts. But Stuart Heritage is right: why, oh why, the Johnny Cash-ified cover of Blink 182? Toby
Mental health provision in the UK is woefully underfunded, but that isn’t its only problem, writes Jay Watts. The punitive conditions patients face are a scandal says Watts, and a result of a longstanding lack of compassion in the NHS. Nimo
David Squires’s cartoons ahead of the Qatar World Cup are essential reading – a beautifully drawn graphic novel of the exploitation of immigrant workers in the country, which has indelibly soured the tournament. Toby
Sport
World Cup 2022 | England’s initial 26-man squad for the Qatar World Cup includes call-ups for Leicester’s in-form James Maddison and Newcastle striker Callum Wilson. Chelsea youngster Conor Gallagher was a surprise inclusion, while his teammate Reece James narrowly misses out through injury.
Cricket | In the second T20 World Cup semi-final, England easily dispatched India, winning by an astonishing 10 wickets. “A side that had not really reached top gear at any stage in this tournament suddenly went supersonic,” Simon Burnton writes from Adelaide.
Athletics | Birmingham is in line to host the 2026 European Athletics Championship, the Guardian revealed on Thursday. Their only rival, Budapest, will withdraw from the bidding process, leaving Birmingham as the sole runner in the race.
The front pages
Our Guardian print edition leads today with “Calls for action as teachers reveal scale of pupil hunger”. The i’s splash is “Unions battle government in new winter of discontent” while the Daily Mail asks “What IS the point of these police?” – officers are shown looking up at a camera gantry across the M25 at a Just Stop Oil protester who is clinging on. The paper fumes it’s the “FOURTH day running” the road had to close like this. In the Times, the ex-chancellor is not saving it up for the memoir: “Kwarteng: I warned Truss over her radical reforms”. The Telegraph’s top story is “Use G20 talks to give peace a chance, US tells Ukraine”. The Daily Express says “‘Tragedy’ for families if care costs cap is delayed”. “Belittle Britain” – the Metro leads with the story of David Walliams’s “X-rated slurs” about Britain’s Got Talent contestants. The main story in the Financial Times is “Wall St rallies as US inflation falls to lowest since January”. “Heroes denied truth” says the front page of the Mirror which claims to expose a “nuke test scandal”. It says veterans involved still can’t get their full medical records, 70 years later.
Something for the weekend
Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read and listen to right now
TV
The English (BBC Two/Prime Video)
In Hugo Blick’s further-revised revisionist western, Pawnee native Eli Whipp (Chaske Spencer) and Lady Cornelia Locke (Emily Blunt) cross the plains of the Old West, the relationship between these two lost souls transcending mere romance. You might lose track of the details, but the plot never becomes impenetrable or the performances less than compelling. Lucy Mangan
Book
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Kingsolver transposes Dickens’s very English, quasi-autobiographical Bildungsroman to her home territory of Appalachia. While the task of modernising his novel is complicated by the fact that mores have shifted so radically since the mid-19th century – “immorality”, AKA extramarital sex? Who cares? – the ferocious critique of institutional poverty is as pertinent as ever. Elizabeth Lowry
Film
Is That Black Enough for You?!? (Netflix)
Elvis Mitchell’s tremendous study of black American cinema features a dense and fascinating mass of clips and interviews with figures such as Whoopi Goldberg (above) and Samuel L Jackson. To watch this documentary is to be taken by Mitchell through the political looking-glass (though more Philip K Dick than Lewis Carroll) into an alternative reality unguessed at by the white mainstream. Peter Bradshaw
Podcast
True Spies: The Bin Laden Files
Widely available, episodes weekly
Sophia di Martino narrates the compelling story of Osama bin Laden with a real insight into the notorious figure’s life and motivation. Peter Bergen is among the experts who weigh in with a glimpse of Bin Laden’s human side, and the first episode traces his first declaration of war on the US, largely ignored by the world. Hannah Verdier
Today in Focus
Cop27: the future is solar, but it won’t be simple
As Joe Biden arrives at Cop27 in Egypt, he comes with a good story to tell on America’s transition to renewable energy. But on the ground in rural Indiana where the country’s biggest solar plant is being built, things are getting nasty. Oliver Milman reports
Cartoon of the day | Rebecca Hendin
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Just where did Kylie Minogue find those gold hotpants? In a London charity shop for 50p, the singer says among many other revelations in this joyful interview with Guardian readers. “I wore them to a nerds, tarts and tourists fancy dress party,” adds Minogue. “When the time came to shoot the Spinning Around video, my stylist pulled them out of my closet and the rest, as they say, is history.”
The weirdest fan tattoo she’s ever seen? Does she sing her own songs in the shower, or someone else’s? And how lucky should you be? Australia’s favourite daughter answers these vital questions, and many more.
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until Monday.
