The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, has ordered the country’s troops to leave an area including Ukraine’s city of Kherson, the only regional capital captured by Moscow since the February invasion.
A Ukrainian victory in in the city, one of the main objectives of Kyiv’s southern offensive, would be widely seen as a significant blow to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, only weeks after a high-profile ceremony in Moscow in which he announced the “forever” annexation of the Kherson region, along with three others.
