Kherson liberated: what 14 November 2022 looked like days on
Three days after Ukrainian troops entered Kherson, the war's southern front, foreign aid and global food costs were all in view.
What did the picture look like on 14 November 2022, three days after Ukrainian troops entered Kherson? The city was the only Ukrainian regional capital Russia had captured during the invasion, and its eight-month occupation had ended on 11 November.
The path to that moment had been quick. On 9 November, Russian forces announced a retreat from the city of Kherson, the western bank of the Dnieper and the western part of Kherson Oblast. The next day, the Ukrainian military said it had recaptured Snihurivka, the last city in Mykolaiv Oblast still held by Russia. Ukrainian troops also retook the village of Kyselivka, within nine miles of Kherson's centre, and explosions were reported near the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant. The advance belonged to a southern counteroffensive that, as later described, had been launched on 29 August 2022 to expel Russian forces from Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts.
Russia's withdrawal was not clean. On 11 November, Russian forces destroyed the Antonivka Road Bridge as they pulled back from the west of the Dnieper. On 9 November, Russian officials said Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Kherson military–civilian administration, had been killed in a car crash while travelling to Crimea; Vladimir Putin issued a decree posthumously awarding him the Order of Courage.
Support and sanctions
Foreign military support continued alongside the battlefield gains. On 10 November the Pentagon announced a $400 million weapons package. It included four AN/TWQ-1 Avenger surface-to-air missile systems, Stinger missiles, 400 grenade launchers, 100 humvees, and artillery rounds and small arms ammunition.
Moscow's response took a different form. On 11 November the Russian Foreign Ministry banned 200 U.S. citizens from entering Russia, among them White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and three siblings of President Joe Biden.
Beyond the front
The war's reach extended to household and national budgets abroad. On 11 November the Food and Agriculture Organization forecast that global spending on food imports would rise 10 percent on the previous year by the end of 2022, to an all-time high of US$1.94 trillion. It attributed this to currency depreciations and the war in Ukraine. The bulk of the increase, it said, would come from high-income countries, while import volumes were also expected to rise. Later accounts of the 2022–2023 food crises list the invasion among several contributing factors, alongside pandemic-related supply disruption, an energy crisis and extreme weather.
On 14 November itself, the United Kingdom announced it was withdrawing its troops from Mali, citing political instability and the controversial relationship between the military junta led by Assimi Goïta and Russia's Wagner Group.
Taken together, the days around 14 November 2022 showed a war in which territorial recovery in the south, Western arms deliveries, Russian countermeasures and global economic costs all moved at once.
