Vladimir Putin will convene his Security Council after the Crimean bridge is destroyed and the army withdraws.

The format of the meeting with the Security Council, the Russian president, top ministers, politicians and representatives of the security services and the military will take place on Monday, October 10, the Kremlin announced, without providing an agenda. If Vladimir Putin continues to hold such meetings, it will interfere with a particularly difficult military environment for Russian power.

Partial destruction of Kerch Bridge, The annexation of Crimea, a region occupied since 2016, by Russia is a major structural and symbolic blow. Russian officials blamed the explosion, which killed three, on a truck bomb. Moscow did not immediately blame Ukraine and Ukrainian authorities did not formally claim responsibility. But without this vital infrastructure, built at great expense on Putin’s orders, a critical supply route for military equipment is disrupted.

On the military front, the withdrawal of the Russian military in several regions will undoubtedly be noted by members of the Security Council. The Ukrainian army’s counteroffensive, launched several weeks ago, drove the Russians out of several key cities, such as Izium and Lymanand continues around the Kharkiv region in the north, now fully under Ukrainian control, and around Kherson in the south. The special journal Defense & International Security notedUkraine’s military has made progress in the past two weeks “Very real. On their own, more than Russia since mid-June.”.

Ukraine has attacked several bridges in the Kherson region in recent months, disrupting Russian supplies and military bases in Crimea. The Russian military assured Saturday that its troop supplies were not threatened in Kherson, a city that has been occupied since the start of the invasion and is vital to maintaining a land corridor on the Sea of ​​Azov.

Accumulated military setbacks forced the Kremlin to change the army’s high command, appointing General Sergei Surovikhin as its chief. “Special Military Operation” In Ukraine. The name of his predecessor was never officially released, but according to Russian media it was General Alexander Dvornikov, a veteran of the Second Chechen War and commander of Russian forces in Syria from 2015 to 2016.