Russian President Vladimir Putin is waiting for winter to turn around his country's invasion of Ukraine after the Kremlin revealed its withdrawal from Kherson on Friday, Newsweek reported.
The leader appeared to distance himself from Russia's retreat from the western Dnieper River during its announcement, leaving the news to defense minister Sergei Shoigu and armed forces commander Sergey Surovikin.
"Putin faces many challenges, what to do in the east and in the south," retired Army Maj. John Spencer, chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Madison Policy Forum, told the outlet. "Putin must decide which problem to resource the most."
However, Spencer said that the withdrawal from Kherson is not as pivotal as people think, arguing that "Russian forces have established multiple defensive lines on the east side of the Dnieper."
"He will try to buy time, hoping the mobilized troops sent to training can get formed, pushed to the front and harden the lines," he predicted.
His comments follow Russia's admission of defeat over the city, which serves as the capital of a region Moscow formally annexed in September along with Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.
"Russia's priority now is to regroup and regenerate," Global Guardian CEO and former Green Beret Dale Buckner stated. "It now has less territory to defend and [up to] 200,000 more Russian troops that will soon be ready to enter the fray.
"Russia is having plenty of success in its campaign of terror, and it will likely double down on what is working," he continued. "Russia is likely to step up its energy warfare with attacks on Ukrainian civil infrastructure."
Buckner and Spencer's assessment aligns with what most Western experts have claimed: that Russia "is trading space for time" in its withdrawal.
"That time it wants to use to integrate the new reservists into formations, generate additional maneuver capability and buy time to allow the poor ground conditions and winter to let the conflict eke into 2023," former U.K. intelligence officer Philip Ingram told Newsweek.
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