After Russian forces retreated from Kherson, leaving behind destruction, hunger, and booby traps in the southern Ukrainian city, the president of Ukraine vowed to keep driving them out of his nation.
The Russian withdrawal from Kherson was a triumphant turning point in Ukraine’s resistance against Moscow’s invasion some nine months earlier. Residents of Kherson gave the Ukrainian troops who had just arrived ecstatic embraces and kisses.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy predicted in his nightly video message on Saturday that “we will witness many more similar greetings” of Ukrainian forces recovering Russian-occupied land.
He promised the residents of the still-occupied Ukrainian cities and villages: “We don’t forget anyone; we won’t abandon anyone.”
Kherson’s recapture by Ukraine was the most recent in a string of tactical failures for the Russian government. It happened about six weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed the Kherson area in southern and eastern Ukraine, along with three other provinces, and declared them Russian territory.
AP reporters noticed downed electricity wires, used shot casings, and a cow carcass that had deteriorated while traveling from the Mykolaiv region into Kherson. The slick road was strewn with numerous wrecked tanks.
Authorities thought about the challenging work of eliminating explosive devices and reestablishing essential public services in Kherson as Ukrainian soldiers on Sunday solidified their control of the city.
The situation in Kherson has been called “a humanitarian catastrophe” by a Ukrainian official. According to reports, the city’s remaining people lack food, medicine, and water. Due to a lack of energy, essentials like bread are in short supply.
During the eight-month occupation, Ukrainian authorities requested assistance from the populace in locating Russian forces’ accomplices. Following the withdrawal of Russian troops, Ukrainian police personnel and public broadcasting services returned to the city on Saturday.
Ihor Klymenko, the head of Ukraine’s national police, posted on Facebook on Saturday that 200 policemen were working in the city to set up checkpoints and gather evidence of potential war crimes.
The Russian-appointed administration of the Kakhovka district, east of the city of Kherson, declared on Saturday that it was evacuating its staff, marking what may be the next area to fall in Ukraine’s march on land that Moscow has illegally acquired.
According to Pavel Filipchuk, the Kakhovka leader established by Moscow, the administration is currently the main focus of Ukrainian aggression.
As a result, under the direction of the Kherson region’s government, he posted on Telegram, “We, as an authority, are going to a safer territory, from which we will run the district.”
On the left bank of the Dnieper River, upstream from the Kakhovka hydroelectric power facility, is Kakhovka.
According to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, six people died on Saturday due to Russian shelling.
He reported on Sunday that there had been four fatalities and one injury in the eastern Ukrainian province of Donetsk, two deaths and two injuries in the Kherson region, and four fatalities and two injuries in the center of Dnipropetrovsk region.
Pictures from Kherson’s social media On Saturday, it was evident that Ukrainian activists were taking down memorial plaques installed by the occupiers. Yellow Ribbon, the Ukrainian resistance movement in the occupied territories, published a video on Telegram of two individuals removing plaques with images of Soviet-era military figures from a park.
Following an intensified Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south of the country, Moscow declared that Russian forces were evacuating across the Dnieper River, which separates the Kherson area of Ukraine from the rest of the country. In the last two months, the Ukrainian military asserted that it had retaken many towns and villages to the north of Kherson, where stabilization efforts were allegedly being made.
Dmytro Kuleba, the foreign minister of Ukraine, attempted to calm the euphoria surrounding the Russian withdrawal from Kherson.
He made the statement while in Cambodia for the ASEAN conference. “We are winning battles on the ground, but the conflict continues,” he said.
According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, a unified statement on the summit’s outcomes was not adopted because “the American side and its partners insisted on an unacceptable assessment of the situation in Ukraine and around it,” he said in a statement to journalists on Sunday.
Backing Ukraine receives from its Western allies, notably the United States, infuriates the Kremlin.
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