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Putin’s Retreat & Kyiv’s Dangerous Hope

If there had been hope in Washington that the capture of Kherson would allow the Ukrainians to return to the negotiating table from a position of strength, that seems unrealistic now. From the Ukrainian vantage point, after all, what would they have to gain, when they still have so much to lose?

President Vladimir
Photo: Dmitry Astakhov/Sputnik/AFT/Getty Images
Julia Ioffe
November 16, 2022

On Wednesday, November 9, as Americans counted their ballots, the Russians announced what everyone in that part of the world knew was coming since August: the Russian army was abandoning Kherson. The southern Ukrainian city, which sits at the mouth of the Dnipro River as it empties into the Black Sea, was once a shipbuilding capital and is still a strategic stronghold, one the Ukrainian army had had in its sights for months.