Instead of admitting retreat from Kharkiv Russian Defense Ministry says troops are “regrouping”

The Russian Defense Ministry has effectively acknowledged a retreat from Kharkiv calling it a “regrouping” of Russian troops from the Balakleya and Izyum areas for a “build-up” near Donetsk. The news has been reported by the Defense Ministry’s Telegram channel and the propagandist media.

Unwilling to acknowledge the loss of control over part of the occupied territories, the Russian Defense Ministry reports that for the last three days Russia has allegedly been conducting an operation on “redeployment in an organized manner of the Izyum-Balakleya grouping of troops” to the territory of the so-called DNR. But Russia's “successes” did not end there either: the army allegedly managed to carry out “a number of diversionary and demonstrative activities with the representation of real troop actions.”

In addition, Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claims that during these three days “over two thousand Ukrainian and foreign fighters” and over “a hundred units of armored vehicles and artillery” have been destroyed.

But photos of the AFU from Balakleya and Kupyansk, as well as reports from pro-Russian and Ukrainian Telegram channels, suggest otherwise. While Putin was busy celebrating the 875th anniversary of Moscow, strolling around Zaryadya and opening the Ferris wheel at VDNKh, the Ukrainian Armed Forces broke through enemy lines near Kharkiv. Now the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue their offensive in the Kharkiv direction, they have already taken the western part of the city of Kupyansk.