Kyiv claims Putin withdraws units from Ukraine to defend Russia

A Ukrainian official reported on Tuesday that Russia has withdrawn some troops from southern Ukraine to its own territory in an effort to counter a growing incursion by Kyiv’s forces, News.Az reports citing Politico .

Ukraine’s ongoing surprise attack has triggered scrambling in Moscow where President Vladimir Putin has expressed anger after Kyiv snatched dozens of settlements and huge areas of territory in the Kursk and Belgorod regions of southern Russia.

“Russia has relocated some of its units from both Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of Ukraine’s south,” Dmytro Lykhoviy, a Ukrainian army spokesman, told POLITICO.

The Kremlin initially attacked the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of southern Ukraine in the first days of Putin’s full-scale invasion in early 2022. POLITICO was unable to independently confirm how many Russian troops have been redeployed back across the border, though Lykhoviy said it was a “relatively small” number of units.

To try to counter Ukrainian gains, Russian troops have, however, continued their offensive on Pokrovsk and elsewhere in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Army, in one of the hottest spots on the war front where Russia is gaining ground.

But Lykhoviy added on Ukrainian TV that Russia has been relocating personnel to “other directions, including to Kursk.”

News.Az