Ukrainian troops entered the southern city of Kherson after Russian forces abandoned the regional capital and fled across a major waterway, a significant setback for Moscow as the two sides dig in for winter.
Ukrainian military intelligence confirmed that the country’s troops were entering Kherson, which had been occupied by Russian troops since the first weeks of the war. A local official earlier said fully securing the city, whose pre-war population was more than 300,000, could take a week.
Photos and videos posted on social media showed people gathering on Kherson’s main Freedom Square waving blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags, cheering on a handful of servicemen in Ukrainian military fatigues.
The Russian retreat ends a more than eight-month occupation of the first and only regional center seized by the Kremlin in the invasion, as the military command in Moscow ordered its troops to abandon the right bank of the Dnipro River on Wednesday. On Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry said the retreat had been completed.
President Vladimir Putin hasn’t publicly commented on the retreat. His spokesman sought to distance the Russian leader from the decision, which he laid at the feet of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the commander of the Russian operation in Ukraine, General Sergei Surovikin.
“It was the proposal of commander Surovikin — and there was the decision of the defense minister,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on a conference call.
While elation erupted in Kyiv, Ukrainian officials advised people in Kherson from premature euphoria as Russian troops were settling into new positions just across the river.
“Fortifications on the left bank are quite close, powerful shelling is possible,” Nataliya Humeniuk, spokeswoman for the country’s southern military command, said Friday on TV.
After making stunning advances in eastern Ukraine over the summer, Ukraine’s southern front proved more difficult. But since the beginning of October, Ukrainian troops have liberated a swathe of territory amounting to more than 530 square miles on the right bank of the Dnipro.
Liberation of the territory around the city of Kherson will allow Ukrainian artillery to hit targets deep within Russian-occupied territory on the opposite bank of the Dnipro as far as the frontier with the Crimean peninsula, Serhii Khlan, deputy head of the regional council, said earlier.
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(With assistance from Volodymyr Verbyany.)
