KYIV, Ukraine—Russia’s military said Wednesday it will withdraw from the only Ukrainian regional capital it captured, but Kyiv was skeptical.
Ukrainian authorities cautioned against considering the announced plan to retreat from Kherson, a gateway to the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula, and nearby areas as a done deal. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that the Russians were feigning a pullout from Kherson to lure the Ukrainian army into an entrenched battle in the strategic industrial port city.
If confirmed, the withdrawal from Kherson—in a region of the same name that Moscow annexed in September—would pile on another setback to Russia’s early failed attempt to capture the capital, Kyiv, and its retreat from the administrative region around Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv. Russian forces captured Kherson early in the invasion, which began Feb. 24….