24,000 Russian troops flee… for now: Huge number of Putin’s forces retreat back across the border following failed bid to take Kyiv – but will likely be sent to Ukraine’s east

• Troops are regrouping in Belarus and Russia ahead of a major Donbas offensive
• A Western security official said Russia will need a month to prepare for the push 
• Mariupol’s civilian death toll has risen to 5,000, the besieged city’s mayor said 

Russia has completed the pullout of 24,000 troops from Kyiv and Chernihiv in preparation for an expected major offensive in the Donbas.

Putin’s soldiers have been sent to Belarus and Russia to resupply and reorganise before the heavy onslaught in Ukraine’s east, US intelligence sources said.

Residents in the Donbas have been told to evacuate now ahead of the impending manoeuvre.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Moscow is now marshalling reinforcements and trying to push deeper into the country’s east, where the Kremlin has said its goal is to ‘liberate’ the region. 

‘The fate of our land and of our people is being decided. We know what we are fighting for. And we will do everything to win,’ Zelensky said, six weeks into the war. 

But a Western security official said it will take Russia’s battle-damaged forces as long as a month to regroup for the major push.

A man pushes his bike through debris and destroyed Russian military vehicles on a street in Bucha

Firefighters remove debris from a destroyed building bombed by the Russian army in Borodyanka

A Ukrainian serviceman walks on an abandoned Russian army tank in Andriivka after the withdrawal

A damaged car is seen next to a heavily damaged apartment building in Hostomel which has been liberated by Ukraine

‘Later, people will come under fire,’ Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said, ‘and we won’t be able to do anything to help them.’

Zelensky added today that Russia is continuing to ‘accumulate fighting force to realise their ill ambitions in (eastern) Donbas’.

‘They are preparing to resume an active offensive,’ he said.

Begging civilians to leave the region ‘while it is still possible’, local officials in Donbas’ Lugansk and Donetsk said the region was already facing constant indiscriminate shelling. 

It comes as the mayor of Mariupol has put the city’s civilian death toll at 5,000. 

Vadym Boichenko said 210 of the civilians killed during the bombardment, street fighting and blockade were children. 

He said Russian forces bombed hospitals, including one where 50 people burned to death.

Mr Boichenko said more than 90 per cent of the city’s infrastructure has been destroyed. 

The attacks on the strategic southern city on the Sea of Azov have cut off food, water, fuel and medicine and pulverised homes and businesses.

Local residents pass by a destroyed building in the town of Borodianka, northwest of Kyiv, after Russian bombardment

Bucha resident Tetiana Ustymenko weeps over the grave of her son, buried in the garden of her house

Residents in the Donbas have been told to evacuate now ahead of the impending manoeuvre

British defence officials said 160,000 people remained trapped in the city, which had a pre-war population of 430,000.

A humanitarian relief convoy accompanied by the Red Cross has been trying for days without success to get into the city.

Capturing Mariupol would allow Russia to secure a continuous land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.

In the north, Ukrainian authorities said the bodies of at least 410 civilians have been found in towns around Kyiv, victims of what Mr Zelensky has portrayed as a Russian campaign of murder, rape, dismemberment and torture.

At a cemetery in the town of Bucha, workers began to load more than 60 bodies apparently collected over the past few days into a grocery shipping truck for transport to a facility for further investigation.

The Kremlin has insisted its troops have committed no war crimes, charging that the images out of Bucha were staged by the Ukrainians.

People on bicycles ride past a building reduced to rubble by the Russian army in Borodyanka

A heavily damaged car is seen next to a damaged new apartment building in Hostomel which had been occupied for a month

Hostomel was occupied for more than a month by Russian forces as they pushed toward the Ukrainian capital, before ultimately retreating to Belarus last week

Thwarted in their efforts to swiftly take the capital, increasing numbers of President Vladimir Putin’s troops, along with mercenaries, have been reported moving into the Donbas.

At least five people were killed by Russian shelling on Wednesday in the Donbas’ Donetsk region, according to Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko, who urged civilians to leave for safer areas.

In the Luhansk region of the Donbas, Russian bombardment set fire to at least 10 multi-storey buildings and a shopping centre in the town of Sievierodonetsk, the regional governor reported. There was no immediate word on deaths or injuries.

Russian forces also attacked a fuel depot and a factory in the Dnipropetrovsk region, just west of the Donbas, authorities said. 

In reaction to the alleged atrocities outside Kyiv, the US announced sanctions against Putin’s two adult daughters and said it is toughening penalties against Russian banks.

Britain banned investment in Russia and pledged to end its dependence on Russian coal and oil by the end of the year.

Civilians board a train as they are being evacuated from combat zones in Kramatorsk, Donetsk Oblast

Increasing numbers of President Vladimir Putin’s troops, along with mercenaries, have been reported moving into the Donbas 

At a cemetery in the town of Bucha, workers began to load more than 60 bodies apparently collected over the past few days

The European Union is also expected to take additional punitive measures, including an embargo on coal.

US President Joe Biden said that ‘Russia has already failed in its initial war’ after the country’s forces were turned back from the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. He cautioned, however, that ‘this fight is far from over’.

‘This war could continue for a long time,’ but the United States will continue to stand with Ukraine and Ukrainians in the fight for freedom, Mr Biden said. ‘We’re going to stifle Russia’s ability to grow for years to come.’

Meanwhile, the United States and the United Kingdom boycotted an informal meeting of the Security Council called by Russia to press its baseless claims that the US has biological warfare laboratories in Ukraine.

The meeting was the latest of several moves by Russia that have led Western countries to accuse Moscow of using the UN as a platform for disinformation to divert attention from the war.

Russia’s deputy UN ambassador Dmitry Polyansky, who presided over the meeting, asserted that Ukraine, supported by the US, was implementing what he claimed were dangerous projects and experiments as part of a military biological programme.

These allegations have previously been debunked. Ukraine does own and operate a network of biological labs that have received funding and research support from the US and are not a secret. 

They are part of an initiative called the Biological Threat Reduction Programme that aims to reduce the likelihood of deadly outbreaks, whether natural or man-made. 

The US efforts date back to work in the 1990s to dismantle the former Soviet Union’s programme for weapons of mass destruction.

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