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BUCHA, Ukraine — The Russian forces that were intent on overwhelming Kyiv at the war’s start with tanks and artillery retreated under fire across a broad front on Saturday, leaving behind them dead soldiers and burned vehicles, according to witnesses, Ukrainian officials, satellite images and military analysts.
The withdrawal suggested the possibility of a major turn in the six-week war — the collapse, at least for now, of Russia’s initial attempt to seize Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and the end of its hopes for the quick subjugation of the nation.
Moscow has described the withdrawal as a tactical move to regroup and reposition its forces for a major push in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. While there are early indications that the military is following through on that plan, analysts say it cannot obscure the magnitude of the defeat.
“The initial Russian operation was a failure and one of its central goals — the capture of Kyiv — proved unobtainable for Russian forces,” Michael Kofman, the director of Russian studies at C.N.A., a research institute in Arlington, Va., said in a telephone interview Saturday.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian attacks continued unabated, and the Pentagon has cautioned that the formations near Kyiv could be repositioning for renewed assaults.
In the south, an aid convoy organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross that had stalled on its way to bring some relief to the besieged city of Mariupol was on the move again. The hope, repeatedly frustrated by Russian shelling, was to bring emergency supplies to trapped residents and to evacuate hundreds of those who have endured weeks of bombardment that has left shortages of food and water.
In the suburban towns north of Kyiv, the Ukrainian army was advancing through a tableau of destruction, with dozens of wrecked tanks on streets, extensive damage to buildings and the bodies of civilians still lying uncollected. Kyiv and its surroundings, which had echoed with artillery booms and gunfire for weeks, had gone quiet.
Ukraine’s military on Saturday moved into Bucha, a key town on the west bank of the Dnipro River — which divides Kyiv — days after Russian forces had sacked it on their way out.
“They went from apartment to apartment collecting televisions and computers, loaded them on their tanks and left,” Svetlana Semenova, a retiree, said of the Russian departure, which she described as chaotic. “They left in a hurry.”
A few dozen people who had been living mostly in basements for a month staggered outside to collect food — bags of potatoes and bread — brought by Ukrainian soldiers.
Elena Shur, 43, an accountant for Ukraine’s national airline, said the first sign of the Ukrainian military came on Friday, when a civilian car carrying soldiers drove through town waving the country’s flag.
“We saw people on the street, and soldiers,” Ms. Shur said. “I cried.”
Reporters counted six bodies of civilians on the streets and sidewalks of Bucha. It was unclear under what circumstances they had died, but the discarded packaging of a Russian military ration was lying beside one man who had been shot in the head.
The town was the site of a major Ukrainian ambush of a Russian armored column in the first days of the war, and one street was blocked by dozens of incinerated tanks and trucks.
Despite that setback, the Russians had captured Bucha and held it for about a month. They executed half a dozen members of the Territorial Defense Force — the volunteer army many Ukrainians joined when the war started — leaving the bodies in a heavily mined part of town, said Varvara Kaminskaya, 69.
The Ukrainians have advanced at least another 15 miles to the northwest of Bucha, where they now fly Ukrainian flags over former Russian checkpoints.
After their initial assault on the capital failed, the Russian army had dug into defensive positions outside of Kyiv, suggesting an intention to hold a front line near the city. In an artillery war, trenches afford soldiers the best chance of survival.
Those were abandoned in and around Bucha on Saturday. On the northern edge of town were the abandoned berms that had sheltered Russian artillery emplacements, surrounded by green boxes and hundreds of empty shell cases.
“According to our information, they are running away from all areas around Kyiv,” said Sgt. Ihor Zaichuk, the commander of the 1st company of the 2nd Azov battalion in the Ukrainian army, which fought in Bucha.
“They can say on their own television stations, if they want, that they are the second most powerful army in the world,” he said. “But they aren’t anymore.”
He…