Ukrainian forces advanced into Kherson on Friday after Russia said its forces had completed their withdrawal from the southern city, sealing one of the biggest setbacks to president Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
Kyiv’s progress and Moscow’s chaotic retreat across the Dnipro river, conducted under Ukrainian artillery fire, means Russia has now surrendered the only provincial capital it had captured in the war, as well as ceding key strategic positions.
It comes just weeks after Putin announced the annexation of Kherson and three other southeastern Ukrainian provinces in a lavish Kremlin ceremony.
Photos and videos appeared on social media of civilians in Kherson waving the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag on city streets to greet government troops.
The Ukrainian military said in a statement: “Kherson returns under the control of Ukraine, units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine enter the city.”
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, posted a video on Twitter of Ukrainian soldiers raising the national flag at the city’s national police station.
“Police officers who mobilized to Ukrainian Army, raise Ukrainian flag over the building of Kherson police,” he wrote.
Video footage posted by Russian military bloggers on social media app Telegram showed the Antonivsky bridge, the main crossing over the Dnipro, had plunged into the river, forcing some Russian troops to cross on pontoons.
Igor Konashenkov, Russia’s defence ministry spokesman, said the army had completed the “redeployment” in the early hours of Friday, without leaving any equipment behind or suffering any casualties and had helped civilians who wanted to accompany them across the river.
However, Oleksiy Arestovych, a Ukrainian government adviser, said that “thousands” of Russian troops had failed to retreat in time and that some units had left their equipment behind.
“The Antonivsky bridge is no longer there, according to preliminary data — there is no pontoon bridge under it,” Arestovych tweeted, adding: “Now, thousands of people, with their resources cut off and the possibility of retreat, are looking at a kilometer of water in front of them.”
As of Friday, neither Ukraine nor Russia had taken credit for conducting a strike on the bridge. Kyiv’s forces had previously hit the bridge using precision western missiles to disrupt Russian supply lines supporting its occupation of Kherson.
Located on a delta where the Dnipro flows into the Black Sea, Kherson is a strategically important region that links Crimea, which Putin annexed in 2014, and controls the peninsula’s water supply.
Losing control of the city — where occupation authorities had put up billboards proclaiming that “Russia is here forever!” — is the latest in a string of failures for the Russian military, outnumbered in the face of a Ukrainian counteroffensive armed with advanced western weapons.
After Ukraine first began pushing Russian forces back in September, Putin attempted to escalate the conflict further by mobilising Russia’s reserves, annexing the regions and threatening to use nuclear weapons.
But Ukraine has steadily pressed on to reclaim swaths of territory that the Kremlin still claims is part of Russia.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, told reporters on Friday that Russia would not relinquish its claims to Kherson. “It’s a region of the Russian Federation. This status is determined by and enshrined in law,” he said.
Social media reports with videos showing Ukrainian forces being greeted by villagers waving Ukrainian flags in previously Russian-occupied areas of the Kherson region indicated that Ukrainian forces had progressed further.
In an overnight video address to the nation, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed “good news from the south”, adding that “the number of Ukrainian flags returning to their rightful place in the framework of the ongoing defence operation is already dozens”.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine had retaken at least 41 towns in the Kherson region, but warned that Russia’s 20,000-strong force on the far bank of the Dnipro could be luring Ukrainian forces into a trap.
“It’s not the enemy leaving. It is the Ukrainians who drive the occupiers out at a heavy cost,” Zelenskyy said.
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