(NewsNation) — Russia’s military said Wednesday that it will withdraw from the only Ukrainian regional capital it has managed to capture during the way, but Kyiv was skeptical and an analyst warned this could be a ruse to lure the country’s forces into a deadly trap. A forced pullout from the city of Kherson would mark one of Russia’s worst setbacks in the 8-month-old war.

Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, calls it a “big defeat” for Russia.

“They’ve lost 50% of the territory that they had gained during the war thus far,” Clark said Wednesday night on “Rush Hour.” “Losing Kherson, the biggest capital, the capital of one of the four regions that they illegally annexed, it’s a big deal.”

“Also, once they go across the Dnipro River, they’re back in a place where it’s gonna be very difficult to maintain that land bridge to Crimea that they’ve been prioritizing, because it enables them to move troops and material directly from Russia to Crimea without having to use the Crimean bridge, which was recently damaged during the truck bomb attack … It really is an important region for them to hold.”