BUCHA, Ukraine — Russian forces intent on overwhelming Kyiv at the start of the war with tanks and artillery retreated under fire on a wide front on Saturday, leaving behind them dead soldiers. and burned vehicles, according to witnesses, Ukrainian officials, satellite imagery and military analysts.
The withdrawal presents the possibility of a major turning point in the six-week war – at least the collapse, at least for now, of Russia’s initial attempt to capture Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and end give up hope of quickly subjugating this nation.
Moscow has described the withdrawal as a tactical move to regroup and redeploy its forces for a major push in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. While there are early signs that the military is sticking to that plan, analysts say it cannot obscure the significance of the defeat.
“The original Russian operation was a failure, and one of its central goals – capturing Kyiv – was proven unattainable by Russian forces,” said Michael Kofman, director of Russian studies at CNA. , a research institute in Arlington, Va., said in a phone interview Saturday.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian attacks have continued unabated, and the Pentagon has warned that formations near Kyiv could be repositioned for new attacks.
To the south, an aid convoy organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross stalled on its way to bring some relief to the besieged city of Mariupol moving again. The hope, repeatedly frustrated by Russian shelling, was to provide emergency supplies to stranded residents and evacuate the hundreds who had endured weeks of bombardment that left them short of food. and drinking water.
In suburban towns north of Kyiv, Ukrainian troops are advancing through a devastating landscape, with dozens of wrecked tanks in the streets, heavy damage to buildings and the bodies of civilians. has not been found yet. Kyiv and the surrounding area, which had been buzzing with artillery and gunfire for weeks, was quiet.
Ukrainian troops on Saturday moved into Bucha, an important town on the West bank of the Dnipro River – which bisects Kyiv – days after Russian forces sacked it on their way to retreat.
“They go from apartment to apartment to collect televisions and computers, load them into tanks and leave,” said retired Svetlana Semenova, about the departure of the Russians, which she said described as chaotic. “They left in a hurry.”
Several dozen people who had lived mostly in basements for a month staggered outside to gather food – bags of potatoes and bread – brought in by Ukrainian soldiers.
Elena Shur, 43, an accountant with Ukraine’s national airline, said the first sign of Ukrainian troops came on Friday, when a civilian vehicle carrying soldiers drove through town waving the Ukrainian flag. country.
“We saw people on the street, and soldiers,” Ms. Shur said. “I cried.”
Reporters counted six civilian bodies on the streets and sidewalks of Bucha. It is not clear how they died, but the discarded package of a Russian military meal was next to a man who had been shot in the head.
As photos of the casualties in Bucha emerged, a senior adviser to the President of Ukraine said on Saturday that some of the dead wearing civilian clothes appeared to have been tied up and executed.
“The bodies of people with their hands tied, those shot dead by soldiers lie on the streets,” adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter. “These people are not in the military. They have no weapons. They made no threats. ” He included an image of a scene, taken by Agence France-Presse, showing three bodies on the side of the road, one with his hands apparently tied behind his back. The New York Times was unable to verify it. Podolyak’s independent statement that those people were executed.
The town was the site of a massive Ukrainian ambush on a Russian armored column in the early days of the war, and a street was blocked off by dozens of burned tanks and trucks.
Despite that defeat, the Russians captured Bucha and held it for about a month. They executed half a dozen members of the Territorial Defense Forces – the volunteer army many Ukrainians joined when the war began – leaving the bodies in a heavily mined part of town, Varvara Kaminskaya, 69 years old, said.
The Ukrainians have advanced at least another 15 miles northwest of Bucha, where they now fly the Ukrainian flag over former Russian checkpoints.
After their initial assault on the capital failed, Russian troops dug into defensive positions outside Kyiv, indicating their intention to organize the front lines near the city. In an artillery war, trenches give soldiers the best chance of survival.
They were abandoned in and around Bucha on Saturday. On the northern edge of town are abandoned docks sheltered by Russian gun emplacements, surrounded by green boxes and hundreds of empty cartridges.
“According to our information, they are fleeing from all areas around Kyiv,” Sgt said. Ihor Zaichuk, commander of the 1st company of the 2nd Azov battalion in the Ukrainian army took part in the battle in Bucha.
“They can say on their own TV station, if they want, that they are the second strongest army in the world,” he said. “But they are no more.”
However, he warned that the Russians could turn back. “Only their commander knows if they will be refitted and turned back.” Even as cars lined up on some roads, returning to Kyiv, workers were building new defensive fences from heavy logs.
According to an intelligence official from the SBU, Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, Ukrainian forces are attacking villages dozens of miles east of the capital on the Dnipro coast.
Analysts say Moscow’s decision to refocus its military on the Donbas in eastern Ukraine may be correct, but mainly because it has few options.
“The Russians are adjusting their goals to reality,” Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, said in an interview Saturday. “I think they know they’re in trouble, so I don’t think it’s a ruse to say they’re focused on Donbas, because in fact that’s all they can do.”
Kofman, an expert on the Russian military, said that the Russian army lost about 2,000 pieces of equipment destroyed, captured or abandoned, including about 350 tanks.
According to Ukrainian officers in other towns, as the Russians retreated, they left behind mines and bomb traps in an attempt to slow the Ukrainian pursuit. In the suburbs of Irpin, which Ukrainian forces had recaptured before Bucha, demining operations were in full swing on Saturday. Ukrainian officials said several civilian agencies were stuck to kill emergency-goers.
A group of military engineers, clad in heavy blue Kevlar armor, tied a rope around their bodies. They pulled it, to see if the movement would trigger the booby trap. By the end of the day, however, the body was still there, and engineers couldn’t seem to be sure if it was safe to collect.
In the village of Dmytrivka, west of the capital, there are signs that the Russians hastily retreated from the carnage. On the forest road leading out of the village, nine tanks and armored vehicles were burned and burned, debris from a tank battle three days earlier. The turrets and heavy guns of the two tanks lay to the side. Inside an armored personnel carrier, the remains of burned men can be seen.
“They didn’t leave, they were destroyed,” said Valentina Yatsevich, 58, a villager who walked past the wreck to her home.
In Russia itself, the retreat has alarmed war cheerleaders, who had previously raised expectations that Russian troops would capture Kyiv.
Semyon Pegov, a prominent pro-Kremlin war blogger with ties to the Russian military, posted a video on social messaging app Telegram on Saturday describing the move as “a retreat, not a withdrawal.” a flight”.
A retreat was necessary, he said, given Russia’s stretched supply lines and the risk of further losses as its troops struggled to survive in field conditions facing the supplied enemy. and much better fortification.
It is an attempt, reflected by pro-Kremlin agencies, to explain why Russia appears to have sharply reduced its war targets in recent days, after suffering losses. suffering in the war for the suburbs of Kyiv.
Russian hardliners calling for an attack on Kyiv see the withdrawal as a disappointment. “I don’t know why this decision was made,” wrote Aleksandr Kots, a war correspondent for the Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, on Telegram. “The war has only just begun. Later we will find out who is right and who is at fault.”
The Kremlin remained defiant when state television published an interview with Dmitri S. Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, claiming that the United States was the root of evils in Europe. He expressed confidence that European countries will renew their relations with Russia once they are “a little more sober than US bourbon”.
In Lithuania, President Gitanas Nausea announced that his country will no longer import Russian gas starting this month. “If we can do it, the rest of Europe can too,” he wrote on Twitter. The European Union is looking for ways to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas.
In another development on Saturday, Pope Francis, visiting the Mediterranean island nation of Malta, more closely blamed President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for the war in Ukraine than he did in the past. In a speech to Maltese dignitaries and officials, the pope blamed a “man of power, sadly caught up in outmoded claims of nationalist interest” for creating “shadows of war” from eastern Europe.
Francis has refused to explicitly blame Putin or Russia as the aggressor for various reasons, including the Vatican’s hope to play some role in a potential peace deal. But on Saturday, it was clear that he appeared to be talking about Mr Putin, who he said was “inciting and fueling conflict”.
Andrew E. Kramer reported from Bucha, Ukraine, and Neil MacFarquhar from New York. Report contributed by Anton Troianovski in Istanbul; Carlotta Gall in Dmytrivka, Ukraine; Megan Specia In Warsaw; Steven Erlanger in Brussels; Maria Varennikova in Bucha, Ukraine; and Jason Horowitz In Rome.
