British intelligence has confirmed the great strategic, political and tactical importance of the liberation of the eastern Ukrainian city of Liman by the forces of Kyiv, Ukrinform reported.

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The agency refers to an operational report of British military intelligence with today's date, BTA reported.

On October 1, 2022, Russian forces withdrew from the city of Liman in Donetsk Oblast under pressure from the Ukrainian offensive.

Liman was defended most likely by understaffed units of the Western and Central Military Districts of Russia, as well as contingents of voluntarily mobilized reservists.

Those forces likely suffered heavy losses as they retreated along the only road out of the city that still remained in Russian hands, the analysis said.

Liman is of strategic importance as it enables the control of key routes across the Seversky Donets River, behind which Moscow's forces have been trying to build their own defensive fortifications, London's intelligence agency said.

In addition, the withdrawal of the Russian army from Liman has a significant political effect in view of the fact that the city is located in the Donetsk region - the region that Russia had just planned to "liberate" and where it attempted illegal annexation.

Volodymyr Zelensky: The town of Liman has been cleared of the occupiers

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday signed treaties on the accession of Ukrainian territories to Russia, a step that is contrary to international law.

At a Kremlin ceremony, Putin also said Moscow would defend the four annexed territories with all available means.

The withdrawal of Russian troops from Liman has sparked a new wave of public criticism of senior Russian military officials from the political leadership in Moscow.

Further losses of territory in illegally occupied regions of Ukraine are almost guaranteed to intensify that criticism and increase pressure on senior Russian military commanders, British military intelligence has predicted.

"Russia lost 60,000 marauding soldiers in the Ukrainian war. Wounded occupiers are three times as many. Therefore, the mobilized men in Russia should ask themselves where the "second army of the world" has evaporated," UNIAN meanwhile quotes today's comment of Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser in the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Russian invasion of Ukraine