LYMAN, Ukraine, Oct 5: Russian troops abandoned a key Ukrainian city so rapidly that they left the bodies of their comrades in the streets, offering more evidence Tuesday of Moscow’s latest military defeat as it struggles to hang on to four regions of Ukraine that it illegally annexed last week.

For the last few months, Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli and his cabinet colleagues have been dismissing public criticisms—even those made with the honest intentions of making the government accountable to its prime duty to rule of law and good governance—by calling them biased and politically motivated.