Putin makes Russian top brass take wrap for Kherson retreat

Vladimir Putin is increasingly using his military chiefs to shoulder blame for the strategic blunders that have led the Russian armed forces to move in reverse. The Russian President was conspicuously absent from a televised address which broke the news to the nation’s people that it was retreating from Kherson.The occupying military is now attempting to establish defensive lines along territory it has captured before winter sets in – a far cry from the widely perceived initial intention of the invasion to completely annex Ukraine.Putin is widely believed to have wanted a swift occupation of Ukraine, taking a matter of days, when he sent troops in nearly nine months ago, as an attempt to cement his legacy as one of Russia’s great conquerors before he became too old to hold high office.But with the Ukrainian armed forces making incisive incursions into territory the Russian President formally annexed two months ago, it is believed he is no longer pursuing what he wants, but rather what he might be able to get.Announcing the humiliating retreat from Kherson – a strategically significant port city to the south of the embattled nation, sitting above Crimea and on the path to Odessa – on state television yesterday, only General Sergei Surovikin, the commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine, and defence minister Sergei Shoigu were present.READ MORE: Ukraine to ‘wrap up war’ with victory over Russia by Summer 2023 General Surovikin (pictured) and defence minister Shoigu delivered the news of the Kherson retreat (Image: Getty) Shoigu was described as one of Russia’s ‘useless and corrupt generals’ by Kherson’s puppet leader (Image: Getty)Last week, unverified reports emerged of one battalion being wiped out within hours of reaching the front line, after officers deserted them with just three shovels between 500 men.It is not the first time Putin – who just months ago was believed by Western intelligence to be micro-managing the invasion down to the hundreds of men – has shrugged off blame for the invasion he instigated.On Sunday, the UK Ministry of Defence reported that he had quietly dropped General Alexander Lapin, commander of Russia’s central military district, completing a quartet of district chiefs to be let go since the beginning of the year.In an intelligence update, it said the unceremonious deposals ‘represent a pattern of blame’ for ‘failures to achieve Russian objectives on the battlefield’. The deposals ‘represent a pattern of blame’ for ‘failures to achieve Russian objectives’ (Image: Getty) Putin quietly dropped General Lapin (pictured), commander of Russia’s central military district (Image: Getty)The defending armed forces have been able to recapture Izyum, a city between Kharkiv and Luhansk, and Lyman.Ukrainian forces in the east are now pushing towards the city of Luhansk. However, many fear that Putin will continue to respond to his military defeats on the ground with devastating missile attacks on civilian population centres and energy infrastructure.Last week, Professor Edward Luttwak, best known as the author of Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, said that Putin’s tactical blunders have made a Russian victory ‘unlikely’.Putin had become ‘a reckless gambler’, sending a ‘very small’ army of 130,000 men to attack Europe’s largest nation – a failure of theatre-of-war strategy. By contrast, when the Soviet Union invaded the much smaller Czechoslovakia in 1968, it sent an army of 800,000.He added that the first strategic mistake – placing the entire invasion’s success on the taking of Kyiv – had a domino effect, stalling the invasion and marooning much of the initial fighting force that had entered the country.