Ukraine is carrying out “stabilization measures” near the city of Kherson after it was re-taken by Ukrainian forces, as people across the country on Saturday awoke from a night of jubilant celebrating following what has been described as a “historic day” for Kyiv and perhaps the most important strategic breakthrough since the beginning of the Russian invasion.
After an eight-month occupation, hundreds of citizens flooded the city streets this morning, reaching out to greet and embrace Ukrainian soldiers and the first foreign journalists on the scene. However, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy cautioned that while special military units had reached Kherson city, a full deployment to reinforce the advance troops was still underway – a reminder that about 70% of the Kherson region remains under Russian control.
Zelenskiy declared the city to be “ours” and that it was a “historic” day for the country, after Russia announced the completion of its withdrawal from the regional capital. In a statement on his Telegram page, he said that people in Kherson never gave up hope on Ukraine, adding: “Hope for Ukraine is always justified – and Ukraine always returns its own.”
A Ukrainian defence ministry spokesperson has told the BBC that Ukraine’s forces are almost in full control of Kherson.
Russia said more than 30,000 service personnel have been withdrawn to the eastern bank of the Dnipro River. The defence ministry said that its evacuation had been completed by 5am Moscow time on Friday. The ministry said there was no military hardware or soldiers left on the western side of the river.
However, reports have emerged of some Russian troops being left behind in Ukraine and changing into civilian clothes, or drowning trying to escape. The ministry of defence’s intelligence unit has urged Russian soldiers to surrender.
The Antonivskiy Bridge, the only nearby road crossing from the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson to the Russian-controlled eastern bank of the Dnieper River, has been blown up. There was significant new damage to the nearby major Nova Kakhovka dam after the withdrawal, US satellite imagery company Maxar said.
Alexander Fomin, one of the members of the Russian-imposed administration in occupied Kherson oblast, has said Henichesk has been declared the temporary administrative capital of Kherson. The region is one of the areas that the Russian Federation has claimed to have annexed. He said: “All the main authorities are concentrated there.”
Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba and US secretary of state Antony Blinken met at the ASEAN summit in Cambodia. “There were very few who believed that Ukraine would survive,” Kuleba said. “This is coming, and our victory will be our joint victory – a victory of all peace-loving nations across the world”. Blinken hailed the “remarkable courage” of Ukraine’s military and people and vowed that US support “will continue for as long as it takes” to defeat Russia. Kuleba however warned that Kyiv still sees “Russia mobilising more conscripts and bringing more weapons to Ukraine” and called for the western world’s continued support.
Britain said Russia’s withdrawal from the only regional capital in Ukraine that it had captured since its invasion began in February was another humiliation for its army but Moscow continued to pose a threat. “Russia’s announced withdrawal from Kherson marks another strategic failure for them,” the British defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said in a statement on Saturday. “In February, Russia failed to take any of its major objectives except Kherson. Now, with that also being surrendered, ordinary people of Russia must surely ask themselves: ‘What was it all for?’,” Wallace said.
The Russian-imposed authorities in occupied Luhansk claim three civilians have been injured by Ukrainian shelling.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general is investigating three bodies that were found in Kherson region, who it suspected were victims of war crimes.
Russia has restated its insistence on unhindered access to world markets for its food and fertiliser exports after what it called a “thorough exchange of views” with UN officials on Friday in Geneva.
Russia’s deputy foreign minster, Sergei Vershinin, has been quoted by state news agency Tass as saying talks with UN officials had been useful and detailed but the issue of renewing the Black Sea grain export deal – which expires in one week – had yet to be resolved. Vershinin was quoted as saying that restoring access to the Swift payments system for the agricultural lender Rosselkhozbank was a key issue.
Turkey is committed to seeking a peace dialogue between Russia and Ukraine, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Saturday, according to Turkish media. “We are working on how to create a peace corridor here, like we had the grain corridor,” Erdoğan was quoted as telling reporters on a flight from Uzbekistan. The president said he would not be proposing a specific timeframe for any extension of the grain corridor deal – which expires at the end of next week – but said he wants it to run “as long as possible”.
The Russian state-owned news agency Tass is reporting that Russia has banned the passage of ships loaded outside the Russian Federation through the Kerch Strait to the Sea of Azov. Tass cited the ministry of transport in Turkey for the information.
Russian oligarchs and executives from multiple companies under international sanctions are among the lobbyists attending Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh.
The British graffiti-artist Banksy has unveiled his latest work, on a Ukrainian building damaged by Russian bombing. The anonymous artist from Bristol, whose work sells for millions of pounds, posted a picture on Instagram of the artwork, a gymnast doing a handstand amid debris in Borodianka, a town north of the capital Kyiv, which was pummelled by Russian bombs and then occupied.
Ukraine is building a wall at its northern border with neighbour Belarus, a key ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin. The concrete wall is already 3km long.
Forty-five Ukrainian soldiers have been freed in a prisoner exchange with Russia and the bodies of two killed Ukrainian soldiers have also been repatriated, the head of the Ukrainian presidential office has said.
The UN nuclear watchdog says an investigation of a research plant in the city of Kharkiv found it was badly damaged, but there were no signs of a radiological release or diversion of nuclear material.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz said Friday that Germany’s priority in its aid to Ukraine should be to help it defend itself from Russian air raids on its cities and to help it rebuild its infrastructure.
