Good day. And as I have said again and again when we confront weeks of this kind — weeks of great symbolism, weeks of images that will live on long after the tactical details have faded — we must be careful not to confuse spectacle with strategy. Kherson, perhaps more than any other place in this war thus far, has been a symbol. A symbol for Moscow, a symbol for Kyiv, and a symbol for the wider world. And this week, that symbol shifted decisively.

For months, Kherson was held up by Russian officials and commentators as proof of inevitability. It was the only regional capital seized after February 24th. It was described as “forever Russia.” Referenda were staged. Administrative structures were announced. Roads were renamed. And yet this week, in a move as abrupt in its public presentation as it was long in its military gestation, Russia announced that it could no longer hold the city and withdrew to the eastern bank of the Dnipro.

One must ask: how did this come to pass? Was it, as some in Moscow would now like to present it, a tidy, rational, pre-planned regrouping? Or was it, as the facts strongly suggest, the culmination of months of Ukrainian pressure that made the position militarily untenable?

Ukraine’s approach to Kherson was, in many ways, the opposite of the dramatic thrust we saw in Kharkiv. It was not about sudden armored breakthroughs, but about systematic erosion. Rather than rushing to storm the city, Ukraine chose to target the lifelines that kept the Russian grouping there viable:

• bridges across the Dnipro and Inhulets, struck repeatedly;
• ferries and pontoons interdicted;
• ammunition depots degraded;
• command posts hit with increasing precision.

This was not simply a military campaign; it was a campaign of increasing impossibility. Every week that passed, Russia’s presence on the right bank became more precarious. Every truck that failed to cross, every depot that detonated, every unit that found itself short of supplies contributed to a growing realization in Moscow: the position might be politically cherished, but it was militarily unsustainable.

And here we encounter one of the central themes of this war, a theme we have returned to many times: the tension between political symbolism and operational reality. Kherson was politically invaluable to the Kremlin. But the very weight of that symbolism made the eventual withdrawal even more devastating.

Ukraine, for its part, understood this dynamic with remarkable clarity. It did not allow itself to be drawn into costly frontal assaults. It accepted that time — and precision — could do what mass could not. As weeks turned into months, the Russian grouping on the right bank became less a spearhead and more a liability, exposed to strikes, dependent on fragile river crossings, and increasingly aware that it might, at any moment, find itself cut off.

When the Russian withdrawal was finally announced, it was framed as a prudent, even humane decision — a move to save lives. But the timing tells a different story. This was not a voluntary repositioning from strength. It was a delayed admission of a weakness that Ukraine had methodically created.

Let us also note the psychological dimension. For Ukrainians, re-entering a regional capital that had been declared “lost” was a powerful reaffirmation of something essential: that nothing in this war is foreordained, and that occupation does not equal ownership. The images of Ukrainian flags returning to Kherson are not mere propaganda. They are a statement of political endurance.

For Russia, however, Kherson is a wound. It is not just the loss of a city; it is the loss of the story that the city was supposed to anchor. The narrative of inexorable advance, of permanent territorial gain, of irreversible change — all of that shattered the moment Russian forces pulled back across the Dnipro.

And so we must understand this week not simply as a tactical event, not simply as a line moving on a map, but as a reshaping of the war’s psychological and political geometry. Ukraine showed that it could compel a major withdrawal from a critical axis. Russia showed that, when faced with a choice between losing a grouping and losing a symbol, it would reluctantly surrender the symbol.

Future analysts will catalogue the strikes, the brigades, the sequence of retreats. But they will also say this: Kherson was the moment when the aura of Russian permanence cracked. It was the first time a city that Moscow had claimed as its own returned, in full view of the world, to Ukrainian control.

Ukraine made that possible. And from this week on, every Russian claim of “forever” will be haunted by the memory of Kherson.