Residents of Kherson celebrated the end of Russia’s eight-month occupation for the third straight day on Sunday, even as they took stock of the extensive damage left behind by the Kremlin’s retreating forces.
A jubilant crowd gathered in the southern Ukrainian city’s main square, despite the distant thumps of artillery fire that could be heard as Ukrainian forces pressed on with their effort to push out Moscow’s invasion force.
“It’s a new year for us now,” said Karina Zaikina, 24, who wore a yellow-and-blue ribbon in Ukraine’s national colours on her coat.
“For the first time in many months, I wasn’t scared to come into the city.”
“Finally, freedom!” said 61-year-old resident Tetiana Hitina. “The city was dead.”
But even as locals rejoiced, the evidence of Russia’s occupation was all around, and Russian forces still control some 70% of the wider Kherson region.
With mobile phone networks knocked out, Ms Zaikina and others lined up to use a satellite phone connection set up for everyone’s use in the square, enabling them to swap news with family and friends for the first time in weeks.
City centre shops were closed. With many people having fled the city during the Russian occupation, the streets were thinly populated.
Many of the few people venturing out on Sunday carried yellow-and-blue flags.
On the square, people lined up to ask soldiers to sign their flags and rewarded them with hugs. Some people wept.
On a more bleak note, Kherson is also without electricity or running water, and food and medical supplies are short.
Residents said Russian troops plundered the city, carting away loot as they withdrew last week. They also wrecked key public infrastructure before retreating across the wide Dnieper River to its east bank.
One Ukrainian official described the situation in Kherson as “a humanitarian catastrophe”.
“I don’t understand what kind of people this is. I don’t know why they did it,” resident Yevhen Teliezhenko, draped in a Ukrainian flag, said.
Still, he added, “it became easier to breathe” once the Russians had gone.
“There is no better holiday than what’s happening now,” he declared.
Ukrainian authorities said the demining of critical infrastructure was under way in the city.
Reconnecting the electricity supply was the priority, with gas supplies already assured, Kherson regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said.
The Russian withdrawal marked a triumphant milestone in Ukraine’s pushback against Moscow’s invasion almost nine months ago.
In the past two months, Ukraine’s military claimed to have retaken dozens of towns and villages north of the city of Kherson.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to keep up the pressure on Russian forces, reassuring the people in Ukrainian cities and villages that are still under occupation.
“We don’t forget anyone; we won’t leave anyone,” he said.
Ukraine’s retaking of Kherson was a significant setback for the Kremlin and the latest in a series of battlefield embarrassments.
It came some six weeks after Russian president Vladimir Putin annexed the Kherson region and three other provinces in southern and eastern Ukraine — in breach of international law — and declared them Russian territory.
The US embassy in Kyiv tweeted comments by national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who described the turnaround in Kherson as “an extraordinary victory” for Ukraine and “quite a remarkable thing”.
The reversal came despite Mr Putin’s recent partial mobilisation of reservists, raising troop numbers by some 300,000.
“Russian military leadership is trying and largely failing to integrate combat forces drawn from many different organisations and of many different types and levels of skill and equipment into a more cohesive fighting force in Ukraine,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, a think tank that tracks the conflict, said.
Meanwhile, British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the Kremlin would be “worried” by the loss of Kherson but warned against underestimating Moscow.
“If they need more cannon fodder, that is what they’ll be doing,” he said.
Ukrainian police called on residents to help identify collaborators with Russian forces. Ukrainian police officers returned to the city on Saturday, along with public broadcasting services.
The national police chief of Ukraine, Ihor Klymenko, said about 200 officers were at work in the city, setting up checkpoints and documenting evidence of possible war crimes.
In what could perhaps be the next district to fall in Ukraine’s march on territory annexed by Moscow, the Russian-appointed administration of the Kakhovka district, east of the city of Kherson, announced on Saturday that it was evacuating its employees.
“Today, the administration is the number one target for Ukrainian attacks,” the Moscow-installed leader of Kakhovka, Pavel Filipchuk, said.
“We, as an authority, are moving to a safer territory, from where we will lead the district.”
Kakhovka is located on the east bank of the Dnieper River, upstream from the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station.
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