Russian state-controlled media revealed fiasco – deleted immediately

State-controlled media reported that Russian troops had withdrawn from the eastern bank of the Dnieper River.

But the news was deleted after only ten minutes.

Now everyone blames everyone.

A year ago, the Russian forces retreated from the city of Kherson to the eastern side of the Dnieper River. The march was a humiliating moment for Putin, who just a little over a month earlier had declared Kherson and three other Ukrainian regions as Russian.

Since then, there have been regular reports of Ukraine carrying out attacks across the water and landing troops on the occupied side of the river.

The reports have increased in the past month. In late October, a Russian commander was reportedly fired after he blacked out the riverside setbacks in his updates from the battlefield.

At the same time, information came that Ukrainian soldiers had moved several kilometers inland on the eastern side of the Dnieper and fought fierce battles with Russian troops.

On Monday morning, the state-controlled Russian news agencies Ria and Tass suddenly published news that Putin’s troops had withdrawn from the area.

Citing the Russian Defense Ministry as the source, they said the troops would be moved to “more advantageous positions east of the Dnieper” and that parts of the forces would be used in attacks elsewhere.

But the news was withdrawn after only ten minutes, reports the independent exile Russian news site Meduza.

Then the chaos began.

Tass wrote that the news had been published “by mistake” and the Russian Defense Ministry’s statement about “a false message” and “a provocation”.

Later, a Telegram channel owned by Russian TV reporter Ksenia Sobchak stated that Ria may have been duped by a fake account pretending to be the Ministry of Defense and controlled from Ukraine, writes Newsweek.

Ukraine’s army, for its part, dismissed the subsequently depublished news as a Russian propaganda operation aimed at creating confusion, Meduza reports. A statement referred to witnesses on the ground who had not seen any troop movements, but added that a Russian retreat would begin later.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the chaos and referred all questions to the military, writes Meduza.

Should Ukraine succeed in establishing a bridgehead on the other side of the Dnieper, a new front could be opened in the war, wrote the New York Times recently. That would threaten Russia’s occupation of Crimea and take the fighting to areas where Putin’s forces have not dug trenches and laid mines to the same extent as on the front lines further to the northeast.