Putin’s return to Moscow after the annexation of the Ukrainian province of Novetskoy Krasnoyarsk
Russian President Vladimir Putin formally announced the Kremlin’s intention to annex nearly a fifth of Ukraine in blatant violation of international law.
Even as its soldiers fled, the Kremlin said that it still considered Kherson — which President Putin illegally annexed in September — to be a part of Russia.
Putin tried to claim that the referendums reflected the will of millions, despite reports from the ground that voting took place at gun point.
The Ukrainian president sent a message on the Telegram messaging app that said it was a historic day. “We are returning to Kherson. Our defenders are on the approaches of the city. There are special units in the city.
The Russian president said that the annexation was an attempt to fix a mistake that happened after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The main aim of Putin’s speech is to restore Russia as a global power that protects the Russian speaking world from the continued threat of Western forces.
Russia will go ahead with its plan to fly the Russian flag over 100,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory despite international condemnation.
Russia said Thursday its forces would help evacuate residents of occupied Kherson to other areas, as Ukraine’s offensive continued to make gains in the region. The announcement came shortly after the head of the Moscow-backed administration in Kherson appealed to the Kremlin for help moving residents out of harm’s way, in the latest indication that Russian forces were struggling in the face of Ukrainian advances.
The Russian front line had an important link in ground communications, and it was called Lyman. It is in the Donetsk region near the Luhansk region, which Russia annexed Friday after a local referendum was held at gunpoint.
The fighting is at a pivotal moment in the Russian President’s war. Facing gains on the battlefield, Putin increased threats of nuclear force and used his most aggressive anti-Western rhetoric to date.
In Moscow, some hawkish commentators have lamented the withdrawal as a humiliation and an embarrassment. Some who had previously criticized the Defense Ministry have agreed to the change. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said Surovikin had saved a thousand soldiers and “made a difficult but right choice between senseless sacrifices for the sake of loud statements and saving the priceless lives of soldiers.”
Meanwhile, on the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, the governor of the city of Sevastopol announced an emergency situation at an airfield there. The smoke and explosives could be seen from a distance by people on the beach. Authorities said a plane rolled off the runway at the Belbek airfield and ammunition that was reportedly on board caught fire.
Escalation in the war: Monday’s strikes come on the heels of other recent attacks across Ukraine. At least 43 civilians were killed in the past week in missile attacks in Zaporizhzhia, with at least 14 on Saturday alone, according to Zelensky. Parts of the bridge connecting annexed Crimea to the Russian mainland collapsed after a huge explosion early Saturday. At least three people were were killed, according to Russian officials. Putin called the explosions a “terrorist attack” and said the organizers and executors were “Ukrainian special services.”
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and his military have vowed to keep fighting to liberate the regions Putin claimed to have annexed Friday, and other Russian-occupied areas.
The Ukraine’s nuclear power plant in the zone of Zaporizhzhia: Russia’s first shot at its own territory
The governor of the Kharkiv region said 24 civilians were killed in an attack on a convoy trying to flee. He said it couldn’t be justified. A pregnant woman and 13 children were among the dead.
The Security Service of Ukraine, the secret police force known by the acronym SBU, posted photographs of the attacked convoy. There were burned corpses in what was left of the truck bed that appeared to have been blown up. Another vehicle at the front of the convoy also had been ablaze. There were bodies on the side of the road or inside the vehicles which had been hit by bullets.
Four people were killed by Russian shelling in the eastern region on Friday, the governor said. The Russian army struck the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv twice overnight, once with drones and the second time with missiles, according to regional Gov. Vitaliy Kim.
In other developments, in an apparent attempt to secure Moscow’s hold on the newly annexed territory, Russian forces seized the director-general of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Ihor Murashov, on Friday, according to the Ukrainian state nuclear company Energoatom.
Russia did not make any comment on the report. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Russia told it that “the director-general of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was temporarily detained to answer questions.”
Repeatedly, the power plant has been caught in the crossfire. Ukrainian technicians continued running it after Russian troops seized the power station, and its last reactor was shut down in September as a precautionary measure amid ongoing shelling nearby.
Vladimir Putin’s Debacle in Lyman, the Eastern Region of Donbas, as a Probe of Operational Crisis in Ukraine
In Washington, President Joe Biden signed a bill Friday that provides another infusion — more than $12.3 billion — in military and economic aid linked to the war Ukraine.
Two days after President Vladimir V. Putin held a grandiose ceremony to commemorate the incorporation of four Ukrainian territories into Russia, the debacle in the city — Lyman, a strategic railway hub in the eastern region of Donbas — ratcheted up pressure on a Russian leadership already facing withering criticism at home for its handling of the war and its conscription of up to 300,000 men into military service.
In an unusually candid article published Sunday, the prominent Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that in the last few days of their occupation, Russian forces in Lyman had been plagued by desertion, poor planning and the delayed arrival of reserves.
Even though Russia does not fully control those areas, the situation is expected to Stabilize after Putin signed legislation to annex them on Wednesday.
However, pro-Russian media has been uncommonly critical of the war effort in recent days, delivering gloomy reports that Russia’s campaign is suffering an operational crisis while Ukraine takes advantage on the battlefield.
Russian forces appear to be buckling under growing pressure as Ukraine continues to regain territory in the south, where Russian soldiers have been forced to retreat from previously-held settlements as Kyiv progresses with its counteroffensive towards the Russian-occupied city of Kherson.
In a bid to celebrate the news, Putin used a televised meeting for Teachers’ Day to congratulate educators from all 89 regions of Russia.
Ukraine’s national electricity company, Ukrenergo, says it has stabilized the power supply to Kyiv and central regions of Ukraine after much of the country’s electricity supply was disrupted by Russian missile attacks on Monday and Tuesday. The Ukrainian Prime Minister has warned of the dangers of damaged equipment, and asked Ukrainians to reduce energy consumption during peak hours.
“You can see that the Ukrainians have moved to that river bank, they are now controlling that area, they will have to mop up some remaining Russian forces that did not make it out of the west bank of the Dnipro River. Those that are there are likely to surrender or be eliminated from the fight.
The Ukrainian military’s fresh success, on the heels of a lightning fast advance across much of Kharkiv in September, will help reinforce international support for Ukraine’s war effort, even as US officials are urging Zelensky to soften his rhetoric on negotiations, if not his core demands.
The Kremlin’s relics in the Kherson region: Where are we going? What are we waiting for? What do we have to do now?
He said that all of the Kherson region’s territories had been reclaimed.
Zelensky on Wednesday assembled his top military and security staff to consider plans for “further liberation of Ukrainian territories,” according to the readout of the meeting from the President’s office.
The Kremlin spokesman told reporters that it is a Russian region. It has been fixed and defined. There can be no changes here.”
In September the Russian Defense Ministry used the phrase Regrouping to describe their retreat from Izium in the Kharkiv region.
Alexander Sladov, a leading Russian war correspondent, said on state TV Tuesday that Russia lost 17 settlements in the Kherson region because of fat US weapons deliveries and intelligence collected via satellite.
The Russian troops don’t have enough manpower to stop the attacks. “The recent Russian losses are directly connected to that. It is difficult on the front line at the moment.
They do not have issues with intelligence data or high-precision weapons. We are waiting for our reserves to join the battle.
Meanwhile, state media reporter Evgeniy Poddubnyy, a correspondent for Russia 24, said Tuesday that “we’re going through the hardest time on the frontline” and that “for the time being it will become even harder.”
It doesn’t mean that we’ve lost our mind. These mistakes are not huge strategic failures. We are still learning. I know this is hard to hear in our eighth month of the special operation. But we are reporters. We are waiting for reinforcements.
He added: “It’s as painful as getting thumped on your melon. We have suffered losses. It is war. In war, these types of things happen. TheReinforcements and their equipment are on their way. I don’t lie or engage in propaganda. I am a regular reporter who describes what is happening.
On State TV he admitted that Russian forces had suffered heavy losses on September 13, a Tuesday. At the beginning of this Tuesday’s interview, Sladkov quipped: “I only tell the truth on Tuesdays, and for other days I just make everything up.”
The strikes came just hours after Ukraine’s president announced that the country’s military had retaken three more villages in one of the regions illegally annexed by Russia.
The Russian occupation of Lyman, the capital of Donetsk, and the first step towards reclaiming a land grab in Ukraine
A 3-year-old girl is in a hospital after being rescued from the multi-story buildings, according to the governor.
The Zaporizhzhia region, home to a nuclear plant that is under Russian occupation, was one of four that Putin annexed on Wednesday in violation of international laws. The city is under control of the Ukrainians.
Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, plans to talk with Ukrainian officials about the Russian move. He will discuss how to establish a safe zone around the facility, which was damaged by the fighting and saw its director kidnapped by Russian troops.
Meanwhile, leaders from more than 40 countries are meeting in Prague on Thursday to launch a “European Political Community” aimed at boosting security and prosperity across the continent, a day after the Kremlin held the door open for further land grabs in Ukraine.
Speaking in a call with reporters, the Kremlin spokesman said that certain territories will be reclaimed and that they will consult residents who are eager to embrace Russia.
The loss of Kherson would be Russia’s third major setback of the war, following retreats from Kyiv, the capital, last spring, and from the Kharkiv region in the northeast in September. Kherson was the only provincial capital Russia had captured in February, and was a major link in Russia’s attempt to control the Black Sea coastline.
The deputy head of the Ukrainian regional government said military hospitals in Russia were full of wounded Russian soldiers and that Russian medics lacked supplies. Russian soldiers are going to be sent to the Black Sea state of Crimea once they are stable.
When Russian troops pulled back from the Donetsk city of Lyman over the weekend, they retreated so rapidly that they left behind the bodies of their comrades. Some were still lying by the side of the road leading into the city on Wednesday.
Both during the occupation and as Ukrainian soldiers fought to take back it, Lyman had heavy damage. A 71-year old man who gave only his first name was one of about 100 residents who lined up for aid on Wednesday.
Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelenskyy: the first time that Russia has targeted energy infrastructure in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, a telegraph message
“We want the war to come to an end, the pharmacy and shops and hospitals to start working as they used to,” he said. “Now we don’t have anything yet. Everything is destroyed and pillaged.
In his nightly address, a defiant Zelenskyy switched to speaking Russian to tell the Moscow leadership that it has already lost the war that it launched Feb. 24.
The city is near a nuclear power plant that is being taken over by the Russian government, and there is restored power and cellular connection.
“Water supply will be restored in the near future,” Rogov, a pro-Russian leader in the regional Zaporizhzhia government, wrote in a telegram post Sunday
Ukrainian authorities have tried many times to deliver humanitarian supplies to the city and are ready to organize the distribution of drinking water in Enerhodar, but Russian forces have not let them through.
In the east to the Lviv region there were reports of down communications. Rescue efforts across Ukraine were slowed due to repeated volleys of explosives coming from the sky.
Putin blames Ukraine for attack on Crimean bridge: Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the Crimea bridge blast, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukrainian “special services” of the attack. Ukrainian intelligence said the strikes had been in the works since early last week.
China and India also call for de-escalation: After the strikes, China expressed hope that the situation in Ukraine will “de-escalated soon.” India said it was “deeply concerned” by the increase in conflict and urged an “immediate cessation of hostilities” and a return to dialogue. ” Other European leaders have also condemned the attack.
Ukrainian emergency services report that several people are dead across the country, including at least five people in the the capital Kyiv, which hasn’t been hit since June. It’s the closest strike to the center of the city since the war began, just over a hundred yards from the office of the Ukrainian President.
Around 30% of the energy infrastructure inUkraine was hit by Russian missiles on Monday and Tuesday, according to the Energy Minister. The minister told CNN that this was the “first time from the beginning of the war” that Russia has “dramatically targeted” energy infrastructure.
President Zelenskyy said in a video posted to social media that the strikes disproportionately targeted civilian infrastructure in 11 of Ukraine’s 25 regions, including power plants and water heating facilities.
Zelenskyy said in the video that it was a difficult morning when dealing with terrorists, which was a reference to his selfies taken at the time Russia invaded. They’re targeting people to harm as many as possible.
Explosions hit kyiv and other cities: 81-year-old Viktor Shevchenko, a pedestrian pedestrian in Dnipro, Ukraine
At least two museums and the National Philharmonic concert halls have sustained heavy damage in the country’s capital. A nearby strike damaged the country’s main passenger terminal, delaying trains during this morning’s rush hour, according to Ukraine’s National Railway.
Explosions rocked civilian areas of Dnipro, a major southern city. There was a bus stop between high rise apartment buildings. A missile just a few yards in front of a bus on its morning route destroyed the bus, blowing out the windows in the nearby apartments.
Ihor Makovtsev, the head of the Department of transport for the Dnipro city council, said that the wreck happened at rush hour, as lots of public transport was operating in the city. The driver and four passengers of the bus were taken to the hospital with serious injuries.
All of our transportation is only for civilian purposes, so it’s hard for me to see any logic in their work.
81-year-old Viktor Shevchenko looked out from what once were the windows of his first floor balcony, just next to the bus stop. Shattered glass covered the ground below. He said he had been watering the plants on his balcony just minutes before the blast, but went to his kitchen to make breakfast.
He said that the explosion blew all of his cabinets open and nearly knocked him to the ground. “Only five minutes before, and I would have been on the balcony, full of glass.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/10/1127794708/explosions-hit-kyiv-and-other-cities
The Russian War on Crime and Security: a message to Moscow and the Kremlin from a frustrated and frustrated Zelenskyy
“We warned Zelenskyy that Russia hadn’t really started yet,” wrote Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a loyalist to Putin who repeatedly has attacked Russia’s Defense Ministry for incompetence in carrying out the military campaign.
Saldo claimed cities throughout Kherson, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia claimed to have annexed in violation of international law, were being hammered by dangerous airstrikes.
The Russian government would give housing vouchers to people who want to move further away from the fighting, Saldo said.
“We suggested that all residents of the Kherson region, if there is such a wish, to protect themselves from the consequences of missile strikes, should go to other regions … to take their children and leave.”
Kirill Stremousov, Saldo’s Moscow-appointed deputy, urged residents to evacuate “as quickly as possible” — saying the battle for Kherson “would soon begin.”
Stremousov has been openly critical of the war’s decision-makers in Moscow and on the battlefield. He blamed incompetent commanders last week for the military setbacks in Kherson.
In Ukrainian cities far from the country’s battlefields the sound of air raid sirens and the Russian attacks shattered the relative calm.
Not for the first time, the war is teetering towards an unpredictable new phase. “This is now the third, fourth, possibly fifth different war that we’ve been observing,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme.
With the cold months nearing, experts say that the next weeks of the war are now important, and another spike in intensity looms as each side seeks to strike another blow.
It means that, as winter approaches, the stakes of the war have been raised once more. “There’s no doubt Russia would like to keep it up,” Giles said. But the Ukrainian successes of recent weeks have sent a direct message to the Kremlin, too. “They are able to do things that take us by surprise, so let’s get used to it,” Giles said.
The counter-offensives have changed the flow of the war and disproved a suggestion, built up in the West and in Russia, thatUkraine lacked the ability to seize ground.
Ukrainian troops hoist the country’s flag above a building in Vysokopillya, in the southern Kherson region, last month. Ukrainian officials say they have liberated hundreds of settlements since their counter-offensive began.
The Russians are playing for the whistle to avoid collapsing their frontline before winter sets in, according to an International Institute for Strategic Studies senior fellow.
“If they can get to Christmas with the frontline looking roughly as it is, that’s a huge success for the Russians given how botched this has been since February.”
It will be easier for Russia to replenish its troops and regain its defensive prowess if they move to the east bank. Russian forces are well positioned along the Dnipro river and any attempt by Ukrainian forces to cross it would be costly. The trenches appeared on satellite imagery and civilians were removed from homes close to the river.
Landing a major blow in Donbas would send another powerful signal, and Ukraine will be eager to improve on its gains before temperatures plummet on the battlefield, and the full impact of rising energy prices is felt around Europe.
There are so many reasons why the government of Ukraine needs to get things done quickly. The resilience of the Ukrainian people and the Western backers is always going to be put under intense scrutiny because of the winter energy crisis in Europe.
NATO leaders have vowed to stand behind Ukraine regardless of how long the war takes, but several European countries – particularly those that relied heavily on Russian energy – are staring down a crippling cost-of-living crisis which, without signs of Ukrainian progress on the battlefield, could endanger public support.
Recent days have meanwhile shown that sites beyond the current theater of ground fighting are far from immune to attacks. It’s unclear how the bridge bombing was carried out but the fact that a target such as deep in Russian territory could be hit suggests a more serious Ukrainian threat to Russian assets.
Experts believe it remains unlikely that Russia’s aerial bombardment will form a recurrent pattern; while estimating the military reserves of either army is a murky endeavor, Western assessments suggest Moscow may not have the capacity to keep it up.
Jeremy Fleming, the UK’s spy chief, said in a speech that Russian commanders on the ground knew that their supplies were running out.
That conclusion was also reached by the ISW, which said in its daily update on the conflict Monday that the strikes “wasted some of Russia’s dwindling precision weapons against civilian targets, as opposed to militarily significant targets.”
“Another thing that the Ukrainians will have to do is they’re going to have to move their systems forward so that they can counter any possible Russian artillery that is going to be on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River.
“The barrage of missile strikes is going to be an occasional feature reserved for shows of extreme outrage, because the Russians don’t have the stocks of precision munitions to maintain that kind of high-tempo missile assault into the future,” Puri said.
The impact of further involvement in the war could also have a psychological effect. In the West and in the former Yugoslavia, everyone is focused on fighting one army. The war would be about getting the lands of ancient Rus states back, as was stated by Putin.
Giles said that reopening the northern front would be a new challenge for Ukranian. He said that it would give Russia a new route into the region that has been regained by the Ukrainians.
Zelensky hopes to get more supplies in the short term so that he can drive home the gains. More than half of the missiles and drones launched atUkraine in a second wave of strikes on Tuesday were brought down, said the leader, seeking to highlight the success of intercepting Russian missiles.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that Ukraine needed “more” systems to better halt missile attacks, ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels.
“These air defense systems are making a difference because many of the incoming missiles [this week] were actually shot down by the Ukrainian air defense systems provided by NATO Allies,” he said.
Modern systems from Germany and the United States arrived this week in Ukranian territory, according to Bronk.
Russian troops in Syria are ready to go – or will they be afraid to leave Russia? Moscow’s first martial law decision in the Dnipro river region
The coming weeks are therefore crucial both on the battlefield, as well as in Europe and around the globe, experts suggest. “As ever, where Putin goes next depends on how the rest of the world is responding,” Giles said. “Russia’s attitude is shaped by the failure of Western countries to confront and deter it.”
In a video, Saldo called on residents from districts around the regional capital of Kherson to flee towards the Dnipro river.
“We will not surrender the city, and we will fight to the end,” he said, adding that residents whose homes might be damaged from shelling could receive compensation from the Russian government.
Ukrainian forces pushed the Russians back 20 miles in October, according to the President’s office and Deep State.
In what appeared to be carefully staged remarks, Surovikin called the decision to withdraw to the eastern bank of the Dnipro River “difficult,” but one that would allow Russia to save the lives of military personnel and preserve Russia’s combat capability.
“We will operate with the goal of maximizing the safety of civilian population and our soldiers. “That is our priority,” he told the Zvezda channel which is funded by Russia’s Defense Ministry.
The Institute for the Study of War suggests that similar schemes are a way of deportingUkrainian citizens to Russian territory.
The mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin, seemed to be taking pains to reassured the public. “At present, no measures are being introduced to limit the normal rhythm of the city’s life,” Mr. Sobyanin wrote on his Telegram channel.
And despite the new power granted them by Mr. Putin, the regional governors of Kursk, Krasnodar and Voronezh said no entry or exit restrictions would be imposed.
It is the first time that Moscow has declared martial law since World War II, and many Russians will see it as a warning.
People fear that the borders will soon be closed and that the siloviki, Mr. Putin’s close aides, will do what they want.
Russia, which has been a dominant military force in Syria since 2015 and helps maintain the government’s grip on power, still keeps a sizable presence there. The change could change the power balance in one of the world’s most complicated conflict zones and may prompt Israel to rethink its stance towards the Ukraine conflict.
Artyom, the catastrophe of a Ukrainian family in Zaporizhia, Ukraine, and his refugeees
“I still can’t believe I walked away,” says Viktor, as he pulls a red suitcase from the black car that he rode to Zaporizhia. The madness is what it is.
His home is just outside Kherson. He and his wife had three daughters there. Viktor was told by a neighbor that Russians broke into their house after they left.
The extent of their suffering has not been focused on. Residents interviewed by journalists have told of friends being kidnapped, children illegally deported and tortured to death. The evidence of human rights abuses surfaced when the Russians left other areas of Ukraine.
At a Zaporizhzhia shelter, a volunteer who asks that he be called by his middle name, Artyom, helps care for Kherson evacuees as if they were his own family. We did not use Artyom’s full name to protect his relatives in Kherson.
Artyom’s frustrations about his wife: A case study in the crisis of Kiev, whose husband is a Russian citizen
His wife generally stays home as much as she can. But to earn money, she sells potatoes and vegetables she grows in her own garden at a local street market.
But Artyom says it’s not fine. He counts his fingers as he lists off his various fears: He worries that the Russians will stop his wife. He worries that she’ll get sick. She is four months pregnant. He worries about the baby.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/07/1134465380/kherson-ukraine-russia-battle-looms
“It’s scary to be here”: Collaborations by Artyom and Sergei Holovnya in Kyiv
Some of them are called collaborators by Holovnya, who is living in Kyiv. He says that there are people who can’t leave. Many are older. Others have few resources. Their lives right now are “intense,” he says.
The streets of the city are mostly filled with local street markets that have popped up since the war began. Local bakers and farmers have been busy at the street markets because the stores in Kherson are either closed or have empty shelves.
“Anything from starting with medicine and finishing with meat can be bought,” says Schevchenko, who fled the area this summer. It’s awful to watch. They sell medicine on the hood and cut meat on the side of the car.
Schevchenko, who is volunteering at an Odesa nonprofit called Side-by-Side to evacuate residents from Kherson and other occupied territories, remains in contact with those in the city. She says her grandmother gives her updates on a regular basis.
Artyom and his wife talk whenever they can. They generally try to keep their conversations light; they worry that Russians are listening in.
It’s scary, but they think it’s a good thing. It’s believed the Ukrainians are getting closer and that could mean Artyom will be able to go home soon.
While state media in Russia said that Ukrainian shelling had damaged the power lines, Yaroslav Yanushevych, the exiled Ukrainian head of the Kherson regional military administration, blamed Russian troops.
The Russian forces have also placed mines around water towers in Beryslav, Mr. Yanushevych said, referring to a town less than 50 miles from Kherson city and just north of a critical dam near the front lines of the fighting.
Before the war, there were a lot of people in the city. Ukrainian activists estimate that 30,000 to 60,000 people remain, but it is impossible to know how accurate such guesses are.
Russian forces made their biggest triumph in the war when they took Kherson city, a former shipbuilding center and a major port over the Dnipro River. Mr. Putin hoped to use the wider Kherson region as a bridgehead for a drive farther west, to the port city of Odesa, but that effort failed.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement Friday that remaining troops have been transferred out of Kherson to the east bank of the Dnipro River early Friday with “not a single piece of military equipment or weapons” left on the other side.
Under the “I Want to Live” program the Defense Intelligence agency of Ukraine promised to guarantee the rights of Russian soldiers who surrendered.
You had to flee Kherson independently and dressed in civilian clothes. “Obviously, you won’t succeed,” the Ukrainian statement said.
Ukrainian soldiers and civilians swept into Kherson’s central square in the late afternoon hours of Friday night’s Russian withdrawal from the city
Images and video on social media Friday also showed that the Antonivskyi Bridge, the main conduit over the Dnipro in the Kherson region, had been destroyed.
During a reported to Sergei Shoigu on national television, the commander of Russia’s forces in Ukranian proposed plans to withdraw from Kherson.
The initial announcement drew skepticism from Ukraine’s government, which previously voiced concern that a troop withdrawal there could be a Kremlin ploy to lure Ukrainian forces into the city.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told Reuters in an interview on Thursday he believed it would take “as a minimum, one week” for Russian forces to leave the city and that Moscow still has some 40,000 troops in the region.
Even as its soldiers fled, the Kremlin said that it still considered Kherson — which President Vladimir V. Putin illegally annexed in September — to be a part of Russia.
KYIV and MOSCOW — Ukrainian soldiers began entering Kherson on Friday after a Russian retreat from the strategic city, in a significant win for Ukraine.
Videos shared by Ukrainian government officials on social media showed scenes of civilians who had endured nearly nine months of occupation cheering the arrival of a contingent of Ukrainian troops.
Elated civilians who had survived months of Russian occupation descended on Kherson’s central square, hugging newly arrived Ukrainian soldiers, snapping selfies with them, and waving Ukrainian flags.
Oleh Voitsehovsky, the commander of a Ukrainian drones unit, said that he did not see any Russian troops or equipment in his area along the front.
He said that the Russians left all the villages. We looked at dozens of villages with our drones and didn’t see a single car. We don’t know how they are leaving. At night, they retreat quietly.
The apparent final hours of the Russian occupation overnight Thursday to Friday featured several explosions and were chaotic and disorienting, according to residents of Kherson reached by telephone on Friday morning.
Serhiy, a retiree who asked not to be published for security reasons, said in a series of text messages before the Ukrainian soldiers swept in that the conditions in the city had deteriorated overnight.
“At night, a building burned in the very center, but it was not possible even to call the fire department,” he wrote. “There was no phone signal, no electricity, no heating and no water.”
The “Russia is here forever” protest in Kherson city, Ukraine, as observed by Russian troops in the Dnieper River on Friday
There was no visible Russian military presence in the city on Friday, but four residents said they saw Russian soldiers dressed in civilian clothes moving around the city.
It said that Russian forces were setting up defensive positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro and shelling the advancing Ukrainians across the river.
In Kherson city, the crowd was waving flags and chanting “ZSU,” the Ukrainian acronym for the armed forces, in the video posted by Volodymyr Zelensky.
Russian military units were moved to the left bank of the Dnieper River in the Kherson direction. [Moscow time] this morning,” the ministry said on its official Telegram channel, using the Russian spelling for the river.
Earlier Friday, the Ukrainian military’s southern operational command said Russian forces had been “urgently loading into boats that seem suitable for crossing and trying to escape” across the river.
A video circulating on social media on Friday, geolocated and authenticated by CNN, showed Ukrainian forces being greeted by residents on the main highway in Tyahinka. The village is west of the hydroelectric dam that spans the Dnieper river at Nova Kakhovka.
One video showed a Ukrainian flag over a World War II memorial, and another showed a girl holding a Russian flag while a group of people destroy propaganda billboards with the words, “Russia is here forever.”
The crowds of people welcoming the Ukrainian troops across the region were in sharp contrast to claims by the Russians that 85% of voters there supported integration into Russia in a referendum which the international community denounced as a sham. Kherson was one of four Ukrainian regions illegally annexed by Russia in September.
The city of Kherson was warned that it would become a “city of death” on the way out of the conflict, and an official in southern Ukraine warned that residents of recently liberated territory were at risk of being attacked by mines.
The head of the Mykolaiv region military administration believes there are a lot of mines in the liberated territories. “Don’t go there for no reason. There are casualties.”
Ukrain has lost its footing in the Kherson region of Nova Kakhovka, Ukraine: a statement from the vice-president of the Russian Federation
Pesko said that it was a subject of the Russian Federation. “It has been legally fixed and defined. There can’t be any changes here.
Locals have also been climbing onto the tops of the buildings, including the cinema, in the square to erect Ukrainian flags. Soldiers driving through are greeted with cheers and asked to sign autographs on flags.
“The people of Kherson are stripping Russian symbols and buildings from the streets and buildings even though the city is not yet completely cleansed”, Zelenskyy said in his address.
Surovikin said that the withdrawal would protect the lives of civilians and troops – who have faced a punishing Ukrainian counteroffensive that targeted Russian ammunition depots and command posts, hampering their supply lines.
Friday was a historical day for Ukraine after Russia announced it would be leaving the west bank of the Kherson region.
Success in Kherson may also allow exhausted Ukrainian units some respite, as well as allow redirected focus on Donbas, where fierce fighting continues in both Luhansk and Donetsk.
Ukranian authorities have a lot of work to do in Kherson, where Russian forces destroyed key infrastructure and left a lot of mines behind.
Maxar Technologies showed satellite images and other photos of at least seven bridges, four of which have been destroyed in the last 24 hours.
The Dnipro dam is located in the Kherson region city of Nova Kakhovka, on the east bank of the river. The sides have accused each other of scheming to destroy the dam, which would cause floods on the east bank and deprive the nuclear power plant of water to cool its reactor.
The events in Kherson and Kharkiv have shown that the Ukrainians are superior to the Russians in battlefield intelligence and tactical agility.
The president talked about the Ukrainian flags in the city and how they were still flying even after the military arrived.
He said stabilization measures would follow due to the threat of mines. “The occupiers left a lot of mines and explosives, in particular at vital facilities. He said that they would be clearing them.
The defenders are followed by police, rescuers and power engineers. Social services are coming back. … He said that life is returning.
Reliability and survival of civilians in the newly retaken areas of Kherson: A visit by the regional military administration of Snihurivka
Officials also on Friday warned displaced residents to hold off on returning to their homes in the newly retaken areas of Kherson, saying, “It’s too dangerous here now.”
The head of the regional military administration of Mykolaiv made a visit to the small city of Snihurivka Friday to discuss restoration of life in the liberated territories of the region.
Local residents are warned to be careful despite the fact that relevant services have already begun relocating mines in the liberated territories.
The Russians were frightening us because they were able to come to our home at any moment, steal, and torture us.
After eight months under Russian occupation, Katerina described the liberation as the best day of her life. “Our town is free, my street is free,” she told CNN.
The next steps for the Ukrainian military will be a major urban operation according to a CNN military analyst. What you are going to see is a methodical operation to clear buildings of potential booby traps and mines.