Military observers and analysts have for weeks predicted a showdown between Ukrainian and Russian forces over Russian-occupied Kherson, but there are signs that Russia may be attempting to dodge a repeat of its humiliating retreat from Kharkiv in September by simply skipping town. While doing so would cement Ukraine’s hold on a strategic port city that fronts both the Black Sea and Dnieper River, it would also put renewed focus on Ukraine’s attempts to wrest the Crimean peninsula from Russian control. 

The Russian-installed puppet government at Kherson has already organized the evacuation of thousands of residents from the city amid ongoing fighting and ahead of an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive. The Russian newspaper Kommersant reported today that the Russian flag has “disappeared” from the roof of the “former” regional administration building at Kherson. While some Russian flags do remain, they have also vanished from the Ushakov Maritime Academy. 

The Moscow Times reported that on Wednesday six Ukrainian artillery strikes, likely carried out by U.S.-supplied Himars systems, on a Russian-built pontoon bridge running parallel to the Antonovsky Bridge a few miles east of Kherson resulted in more Russian supply lines being cut off. All told, these developments  speak volumes about the success, or rather lack thereof, of President Putin’s recent illegal annexation of the region.

Even the deputy head of the administration of the Kherson region, Kirill Stremousov, said that Russian troops most likely will “go to the left bank” of the Dnieper. To fight, or the better to flee? While a battle is still likely, the question is becoming more one of scope. Military Times reported this week that “consistent degradation of Russian logistics and supply lines has hampered the enemy’s ability to effectively contest the battlefield” and that well-trained, Western-armed Ukrainian units such as the 59th Motorized Brigade now “smell blood in the water.” 

To Ukraine’s likely advantage, the Russians smell blood too, only their own. That could explain widespread looting by fleeing Russian soldiers in the war-weary but still functioning city of Kherson. What is going on is not a general cut-and-run, at least not yet. As the New York Times and other sources have reported, Kherson’s main frontline appears to be shifting some 60 miles northeast of the city, and Russian troops there still outnumber Ukrainian soldiers by as much as 30 to one. Yet Russia’s annual fall draft of 120,000 men is misconstrued by some: By most accounts Moscow has pointedly not ordered up more troops to fight specifically at Kherson.

Meanwhile, according to a report in the Kyiv Independent, Russian troops have been moving proxies from Kherson closer to Crimea. Ukrainian intelligence sources say that over the past few weeks, “Russian-installed proxies and collaborators” have been resettled from Kherson to hotels at various locations around the Russian-occupied peninsula. For what purpose was not immediately clear, but it could be that Moscow is seeing Crimea as a safer haven for some of its own people than the embattled Ukrainian heartland. 

President Zelensky has previously said that Russia’s war on Ukraine began in Crimea and will end in Crimea. That there is no part of Ukraine that Mr. Putin covets more has not been in question since 2014, when at this behest the Kremlin illegally annexed it.  Yet the peninsula is coming into sharper focus now not only as Kherson momentarily recedes but because of its prominence in what Mr. Zelensky has correctly hailed as a Putin U-turn on the Ukraine deal. Russia initially threatened to bolt from a UN-backed, Turkish-brokered deal that allowed exports of grain from Ukraine through the Black Sea following a weekend drone attack on its warships at Sevastopol. The Russian defense ministry has since said it received “sufficient” guarantees from Kyiv that it would not use an agreed “safe” maritime corridor to carry out attacks.

“The Kremlin is saying that they demanded security guarantees from Ukraine [but] 252 days ago Russia demanded security guarantees from the United States of America,” Mr. Zelensky said in his video address to Ukraine on Wednesday night. “These are really striking changes: This shows both the failure of Russian aggression,” he continued, adding that “Russian blackmail has led nowhere.”

In the meantime, Russian material losses mount everywhere. The British defense ministry reported on Thursday that Russian forces are losing about 40 armored vehicles a day in Ukraine, or roughly the equivalent of a battalion’s worth of equipment. It added that Russian soldiers serving in Ukraine are likely frustrated that they are forced to serve in old infantry combat vehicles which they describe as aluminum cans.”

That the strategic situation in Crimea is complicated is an understatement, but as both Messrs. Zelensky and Putin well know, it is where a considerable  amount of Russian firepower in the form of missiles and Iranian-made attack drones is housed. Any wound to Russia’s prized Black Sea fleet, historically headquartered at Sevastopol, is something Moscow is incapable of  forgetting.

In terms of the grain deal, Kyiv won this round but Moscow is now openly blaming one of Ukraine’s chief backers in the conflict, Britain, for organizing Saturday’s drone strike on Russian ships.  London was swift to dismiss Moscow’s accusations of involvement as “false claims of an epic scale,” but that did not stop the Kremlin from summoning the British ambassador to Russia, Deborah Bronnert. 

The Russian defense ministry said in a statement Thursday that “the demarche stressed that such confrontational actions by the British threatened to escalate the situation and could lead to unpredictable and dangerous consequences.”

The Russian statement also put forward that Britain had been training Ukrainian divers “for some time” in “deep-sea sabotage skills,” a reference to the September attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines for which Russia blames the British navy. Britain has called the Kremlin’s allegations false and a distraction from Moscow’s military failures in Ukraine.  Russian media made much of the observation that after a half-hour meeting with Russian officials on Thursday, Ms. Bonnert left the foreign ministry building unsmiling.