President Vladimir Putin was absent from the room when Russia’s top military officials decided to withdraw troops from Kherson, a strategic city in southern Ukraine. On November 9, Putin was touring a neurological hospital in Moscow and watching a surgeon perform brain surgery as Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Sergei Surovikin, Russia’s top commander in Ukraine, stiffly recited the justifications for the retreat in front of the cameras. Putin spoke at another event later that day, but he avoided bringing up the withdrawal from Kherson, which was arguably Russia’s most humiliating action in Ukraine. He hasn’t made any public comments about it in the days since. Putin’s silence comes as Russia experiences increasing setbacks in its war that has lasted almost nine months. The Russian president appears to have used a strategy he employed during the coronavirus pandemic in which he assigned others to deliver bad news. Kherson was the only regional capital in […]
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