Pentagon: Russia has lost partial control of first captured Ukrainian city

The Pentagon claimed on Friday that Russia has lost partial control of the first city it captured in Ukraine, an apparent ratcheting up of its psychological warfare against the Russian military campaign there. 

“We’ve seen reports of resistance there in areas that were previously reported to be in Russian control,” an unidentified Pentagon official told reporters on Friday. “We can’t corroborate exactly who is in control of Kherson, but the point is it doesn't appear to be as solidly in Russian control as it was before ... we would argue that Kherson is actually contested territory again.”

The official added that Ukrainian forces were fighting to take back control of the vital port city located northwest of Crimea.

However, both Russian and Ukrainian officials challenged the US assessment.

Russian defense ministry’s deputy head of the general staff Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy said on Friday said the Kherson region was “under full control.”

And Ukrainian officials also rejected the Pentagon’s claims, saying the city still looked to be under Russian control.

The flurry of statements attributed to unnamed US defense officials regarding the war in Ukraine are nothing but psychological warfare, according to an American journalist and political commentator.

“What's coming out of Washington is psychological warfare, nothing more,” said Don DeBar, a journalist based in New York.

“Even without the Russians, and with US help, Ukraine has been unable to project power into the east for the past 8 years. Now the Russians have taken out the air defenses, and apparently they've also pretty much decimated the Azov fascist battalions,” he told Press TV.

“The Ukrainians themselves say that the Russians have already cut through to Kiev and some other cities in the West,” he added.

Rudskoy earlier on Friday said that “the main tasks of the first stage of the operation have been completed.”

“The combat potential of the armed forces of Ukraine has been significantly reduced, allowing us, I emphasize again, to focus the main efforts on achieving the main goal: The liberation of Donbas,” he added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country is defending Russian-speaking communities through the "demilitarisation and de-Nazification" of Ukraine so that their neighbor became neutral and no longer threatened Russia.

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