Russia's Ministry of Defense lies about Russian troops' controlled withdrawal from Balaklia, Izyum - ISW

This is reported by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). 

American analysts draw attention to the fact that on September 10, Russia's Ministry of Defense announced the withdrawal of troops from the Balaklia-Izyum line and falsely presented the retreat as a "regrouping of forces" to support efforts in the Donetsk direction. Thus, the Kremlin's false explanation regarding the retreat of the Russians after the battle near Kyiv was repeated.

The ISW emphasizes that Russia's Ministry of Defense did not recognize the Ukrainian Armed Forces' successes in the Kharkiv region as the main factor in the retreat of the Russians and claimed that the Russian military command had been conducting a controlled retreat from the Balaklia-Izyum area for the past three days. It added that Russia's Ministry of Defense falsely claimed that Russian troops had carried out a series of demonstration actions and used artillery and aviation to ensure the safety of the withdrawal of Russian troops.

Experts from the US concluded that these statements have no relation to the situation at the scene of the events. The inability of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation to recognize miscalculations in the Kharkiv region is destroying the Russian information space.

As a result, the Kremlin's propagandists offered a wide range of confused explanations for Ukrainian successes, ranging from justifications that Russian forces were fighting against the entire Western bloc to downplaying the importance of land supply lines at Kupiansk.

"The propagandists turned out to be extremely disorganized in their narratives: some confirmed the liberation of certain cities, while others denied this. The invited experts were also unable to confirm the narrative that Ukrainian successes are not important for the situation in Donbas," the ISW concluded.