Putin’s return to Kherson in response to the Ukrainian government’s failure to acknowledge the annexation by the Kremlin

Russia’s parliament will ratify its attempted annexation of four Ukrainian territories, widely condemned internationally as illegal. On Monday, the lower house unanimously approved it. The upper house is expected to pass it on Tuesday.

After Russia pulled its troops from the southern city of Kherson, the Ukrainian forces entered to take over.

Putin, however, attempted to claim that the referendums reflected the will of “millions” of people, despite reports from the ground suggesting that voting took place essentially – and in some cases, literally – at gunpoint.

In a message on the Telegram app, the Ukrainian president said that it was a historic day. “We are returning to Kherson. As of now, our defenders are on the approaches of the city. But special units are already in the city.”

The Russian president framed the annexation as an attempt to fix what he sees as a great historical mistake that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Putin’s speech echoed his major foreign policy aim: restoring Russia as a major global power charged with protecting the Russian speaking world from the continued threat posed by Western forces.

Russia will now, despite the widespread international condemnation, forge ahead with its plans to fly its flag over some 100,000 square kilometers (38,600 square miles) of Ukrainian territory – the largest forcible annexation of land in Europe since 1945.

Putin spoke at the St. George hall, where he held a signing ceremony. “And that choice won’t be betrayed” by Russia, he said.

The Russian leader called on Ukraine to end hostilities and hold negotiations with Moscow — but insisted that the status of the annexed territories was not up for discussion.

Putin was joined by Moscow-backed separatist leaders and Kremlin-appointed officials from the four regions, as senior Russian lawmakers and dignitaries looked on.

Outside the Kremlin, preparations were under way for an evening concert and rally with banners saying Russia and the newly integrated territories are “together forever.”

The people of four occupied regions chose to join the Russian Federation in staged referendums, claimed Russia. United Nations leaders and many countries called the process a sham and a violation of international law.

“The United States will never, never, never recognize Russia’s claims on Ukraine sovereign territory,” Biden said. “This so-called referenda was a sham — an absolute sham — and the results were manufactured in Moscow.”

Putin, however, framed the decision as a historical justice following the breakup of the Soviet Union that had left Russian speakers separated from their homeland — and the West dictating world affairs according to its own rules.

Once again, Western powers accused Russia this month of using the guise of staged votes to justify its annexation of Ukraine’s territory — often at the barrel of a gun.

A wave of missiles, rockets and drones has struck dozens of locations across Ukraine since Monday, according to officials, targeting civilian infrastructure in several major cities, including Kyiv, located hundreds of miles from the front lines in the east and south.

The State of Ukraine (Preliminary Russian PRD) Report: The Debacle of Lyman, a Strategic Railway Hub in Donbas

The territories will be formally approved by Russia’s parliament and constitutional court, with the approval widely seen as a foregone conclusion.

The Russian government is working to deploy an additional 300,000 troops to bolster its defense as it fights a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south and northeast of the country.

Russian officials have said that the new territories would be entitled to protections under Russia’s nuclear umbrella.

Russia’s retreat from Lyman, which sits on a riverbank that has served as a natural division between the Russian and Ukrainian front lines, came after weeks of fierce fighting.

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.

The deputy leader of the occupied Kherson region said that the Russian military was regrouping.

Sept. 28: The officials made appeals for the regions to join the Russian Federation. Putin’s approval rating fell 6 points to 77% in a poll by the Levada Center. The U.S. Defense Department, meanwhile, announced $1.1 billion in additional security aid to Ukraine.

Several European countries that relied on Russian energy are facing a cost-of-living crisis which, if not addressed, could endanger the public’s support.

You can read past recaps here. You can find more of NPR’s coverage here. You can keep up with the State of Ukraine on NPR’s State of Ukraine show.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent military conscription and his battle for annexation of the Zaporizhzhia facility

The military conscription Mr. Putin ordered on Sept. 21 to bolster his battered forces has set off nationwide turmoil and protest, bringing the war home to many Russians who had felt untouched by it. Many men have been draftees who were not eligible based on age or disability.

Despite Russia’s lack of control over the four war torn regions of Ukranian, President Putin thinks he should be able to bring calm to them.

While Russian state television hailed Putin’s inking of the annexation process, pro-Kremlin pundits delivered rare dispatches on the growing setbacks faced by Moscow’s troops on the ground.

The Russian military has been forced to retreat from settlements in the south where the Ukrainians are making inroads towards the Russian-occupied city of Kherson.

In a bid to celebrate the news, Putin took the opportunity in a televised meeting for Teachers’ Day to congratulate educators from “all 89 regions of Russia,” a number that includes the newly annexed territories.

The head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog will visit Kyiv this week to discuss the situation at the Zaporizhzhia facility, which was taken over by Russia after a decree was signed by Putin. Putin’s decree was considered “null and void” by the Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry. The nuclear operator said it will continue to operate the plant.

The war has gone through different phases, which makes it difficult to make wartime assessments. During the fight for the city of Kyiv, the Ukrainians defeated the Russians but Russia kept fighting in the rest of the country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the military for their “fast and powerful advances” in his Tuesday evening address, before celebrating that “dozens of settlements have already been liberated” this week.

In Kherson region, he said that Liubymivka, Khreshchenivka, Zolota Balka, Biliaiivka, Ukraiinka, Velyka, Mala Oleksandrivka, and Davydiv Brid had all been reclaimed, “and this is not a complete list.”

Zelensky convened his military and security staff to consider plans to liberate more of Ukrainian territories, according to the President’s office.

“This is a Russian region,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told reporters on Friday. It has been defined and fixed. There can’t be any changes here.

Kirill Stremousov is quoted as saying that the Russian army is conducting maneuvers. “The regrouping of the front in the current conditions allows us to gather strength and strike.”

The phrase “regrouping” was also used by the Russian Defense Ministry in September to describe the retreat of the Russian military in response to Ukraine’s offensive that recaptured the key city of Izium, in the Kharkiv region.

“In the Kherson region, we have lost 17 settlements,” Alexander Sladkov, a leading Russian war correspondent, conceded on state TV Tuesday, before placing the blame on “fat” US weapons deliveries and “intelligence gathered via satellite reconnaissance.”

The military lacks the manpower necessary to hold off the Ukrainian advance into the Luhan, a correspondent with Komsomolskaya Pravda told his Telegram followers Wednesday.

The defense ministry said in a statement that the last troops have left Kherson and are on the east bank of the Dnipro River.

“They don’t have problems with the intelligence data or high-precision weapons which they are constantly using. We are just waiting for our reserves to become fighting fit and 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.”

“This doesn’t mean we’ve fallen down like a house of cards.” These mistakes aren’t gigantic strategic failures. We are still learning how to do it. This is hard to hear in the eighth month of the special operation. But we are reporters. We are waiting for reinforcements.

He said that it was as painful as being thumped on a melon. We have suffered losses. It is war. And these kinds of things happen in war. [Reinforcements] are coming, along with their equipment. I do not lie or engage in propaganda. I am just a regular reporter who is telling you what is happening.

Less than a month ago he admitted on State TV that Russian forces had suffered heavy losses on September 13, a Tuesday. Sladov said at the beginning of the interview: “I only tell the truth on Tuesdays and for other days I just make everything up.”

Kiev strikes in the Zaporizhia area of the Ukrainian-occupied region of the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe and the reopening of the European Political Community

KYIV — Seven Russian rockets slammed into residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia before dawn Thursday, killing two people and trapping at least five in the city close to Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant, the governor of the mostly Russian-occupied region said.

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.

Governor Oleksandr Starukh wrote on his Telegram channel that many people were rescued from the multi-story buildings, including a 3-year-old girl who was taken to a hospital for treatment.

The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency is going to talk to Ukrainian officials about the Russian move. The facility has been damaged during the fighting and staff, including the director, were 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 conference call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “certain territories will be reclaimed, and we will keep consulting residents who would be eager to embrace Russia.”

There is little chance of a Russian collapse that would allow the Ukrainians to take a huge swath of territory, according to American officials. The city of Kherson, which is a major prize in the war, could be given to the Ukrainian army if Russian units were to break in the face of sustained Ukrainian pressure.

The deputy head of the Ukrainian regional government, Yurii Sobolevskyi, said military hospitals were full of wounded Russian soldiers and that Russian military medics lacked supplies. Russian soldiers will be going to the annexed peninsula of Ukranian called Crimea when they are stable.

Lyman sustained heavy damage both during the occupation and as Ukrainian soldiers fought to retake it. Mykola, a 71-year-old man who gave only his first name, was among about 100 residents who lined up for aid on Wednesday.

A complete disaster in Ukraine, as reported by the Ukrainian presidential office building in Kiev during the February 24 eruption of the Kushush bridge bombing

He wants the war to end so that the shops and hospitals are able to work again. “Now we don’t have anything yet. Everything is destroyed and pillaged, a complete disaster.”

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.

Michael Bociurkiw is a global affairs analyst. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and used to work at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is a regular contributor to CNN Opinion. The opinions are of his own. View more opinion at CNN.

Recent days have meanwhile shown that sites beyond the current theater of ground fighting are far from immune to attacks. It remains unclear exactly how the Kerch bridge bombing was carried out – and Kyiv has not claimed responsibility – but the fact that a target so deep in Russian-held territory could be successfully hit hinted at a serious Ukrainian threat towards key Russian assets.

Russia has lots of weaponry and thousands of troops who have been sent to battle, and it also has a campaign against the infrastructure of the Ukranian people that has left power and water supplies hanging by a thread. Ukraine is slowly receiving advanced air defenses from Western donors but has a huge area to defend.

Unverified video on social media showed hits near the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and close to Maidan Square, just a short stroll from the Presidential Office Building. Five people were killed as a result of strikes on the capital, according to Ukrainian officials.

As of midday local time, the area around my office in Odesa remained eerily quiet in between air raid sirens, with reports that three missiles and five kamikaze drones were shot down. (Normally at this time of the day, nearby restaurants would be heaving with customers, and chatter of plans for upcoming weddings and parties).

Less than 24 hours before, Zaporizhzsky was hit by a series of strikes on apartment buildings, mostly while people slept. Several people were killed and many others were injured.

In a video that was filmed outside his office on Monday, President Zelensky said that many missile strikes across the country were directed at the country’s energy infrastructure. The capital has been damaged, and at least 11 important infrastructure facilities have been damaged in other parts of the country.

Other videos showed cars driving in the city center beeping horns as people on the sidewalks shouted “Glory to Ukraine!” In one, Ukrainian soldiers drove slowly past a crowd as people reached out to touch the soldiers through the open windows.

Indeed, millions of people in cities across Ukraine will be spending most of the day in bomb shelters, at the urging of officials, while businesses have been asked to shift work online as much as possible.

Just as many regions of Ukraine were starting to roar back to life, and with countless asylum seekers returning home, the attacks risk causing another blow to business confidence.

Monday’s attacks may have achieved one goal, which is to send a signal of strength towards the growing list of Putin’s critics.

dictators seem to prefer hardwiring newly claimed territory with expensive infrastructure projects. Putin opened the Kerch bridge by driving his truck across it. After Macau and Hong Kong were reclaimed by Beijing, it was their president who decided to build the world’s longest sea crossing bridge. The road bridge has been delayed for about two years.

What if? How Putin responded to his explosion on social media, unleashing more death and destruction and causing a humanitarian crisis in Europe

The explosion lit up social media channels like a Christmas tree, with humorous Memes that lit up all social media channels. Many people shared their jubilation with text messages.

Sitting was never an option for Putin, who was consumed with self-interest. He responded in the only way he knows how, by unleashing more death and destruction, with the force that probably comes natural to a former KGB operative.

It was also an act of selfish desperation: facing increasing criticism at home, including on state-controlled television, has placed Putin on unusually thin ice.

The Kremlin faced growing setbacks and appointed a new overall commander. But there is little sign that Gen. Sergey Surovikin can lead his forces back onto the front foot before the end of the year, given the pace and cost of the Ukrainian counter-offensives.

What is crucially important now is for Washington and other allies to use urgent telephone diplomacy to urge China and India – which presumably still have some leverage over Putin – to resist the urge to use even more deadly weapons.

Anything short of these measures will only allow Putin to continue his senseless violence and further exacerbate a humanitarian crisis that will reverberate throughout Europe. A weak reaction will be seen as a sign that the Kremlin can continue to weaponize energy, migration and food.

The Russian Defense Ministry’s response to a Russian-backed request for evacuation of civilians from the Kherson region in the midst of a Ukrainian crisis

The country needs high tech defense systems to protect its energy infrastructure. The need to protect heating systems is urgent during the winter.

It is time for the West to impose travel restrictions on Russia, but Turkey and the Gulf states need to be pressured into doing so by the West in order to have enough impact.

Russia-backed authorities began to evacuate civilians from the occupied Ukrainian region of Kherson Wednesday, a sign that Moscow’s hold over the territory seems to be getting harder to hold.

The announcement by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin came shortly after the head of the Moscow-backed administration in Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, 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.

Saldo claimed that Kherson, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia claimed to have annexation in violation of international law, was being hit by dangerous airstrikes.

If there is a wish to protect themselves from missile strikes, we suggested that all residents of the Kherson region leave and go to other areas.

However, Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Kherson region’s military administration, said that the civilian transports were not an “evacuation.”

Some commentators in Moscow felt that the withdrawal was humiliation and embarrassment. But others who were previously critical of the Defense Ministry have accepted the move. The Chechen leader said it was difficult to choose between sacrifice for loud statements and saving the lives of soldiers.

Not for the first time, the war is teetering towards an unpredictable new phase. Keir Giles, senior consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme, said that this is the third, fourth, or fifth war they have been observing.

The next few weeks of the war are expected to be vital, and a potential spike in intensity looms as each side wants to strike another blow.

The stakes of the war have been raised once more as winter approaches. “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. Giles said to get used to it, as they are able to do things that take us by surprise.

Monday’s attacks, and further strikes throughout the week, were evidence of Russian President Vladimir Putin lashing out after a series of setbacks in the war that have put him under pressure domestically.

The counter-offensives have shifted the momentum and disproved the notion that the war in Ukraine didn’t have the ability to seize ground.

There were unconfirmed videos and photos online of the Ukrainian flag being raised atop the police headquarters and Kherson city administration building. Several videos showed people tearing down billboards that read “Russia is Here forever.”

The Russians are trying to avoid a collapse in their frontline before winter sets in, according to a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“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.”

If the Russians get a major blow in Donbas it would send another signal, and the full impact of rising energy prices will be felt around Europe.

“There are so many reasons why there is an incentive for Ukraine to get things done quickly,” Giles said. This winter’s energy struggles in Europe and the power catastrophe in Ukraine is always going to be a test of resilience for the Western backers of the country.

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. But Ukrainian Prime Minister has warned that “there is a lot of work to do” to fix damaged equipment, and asked Ukrainians to reduce their energy usage during peak hours.

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.

“We know – and Russian commanders on the ground know – that their supplies and munitions are running out,” Jeremy Fleming, a UK’s spy chief, said in a rare speech on Tuesday.

Russia may have limited options to disrupt ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensives because it does not have much of a supply of precision weapons.

What amount of weaponry and manpower each side has left in reserve will be important in determining how the momentum will shift in the coming weeks. Ukraine said on Tuesday and Monday it was able to intercept 18 cruise missiles, but it is urging its Western allies to have more equipment to defend against future attacks.

The Russians do not have enough precision weapons to maintain that type of high-tempo missile assault into the future, which is why the barrage of missile strikes is going to be an occasional feature.

Some assistance for Putin is likely to be on the way. Concerns about deepened military cooperation between the close allies were raised after Alexander Lukashenko made an announcement that a group of troops would be sent to Russia. Belarus has been complaining of alleged Ukrainian threats to its security in recent days, which observers say could be a prelude to some level of involvement.

Giles said the reopening of a northernfront would be a challenge for Ukranian. It would provide Russia’s new route into the region, which has been wrested back from Ukraine, should Putin prioritize his efforts to regain that area.

Now Zelensky will hope for more supplies in the short-term as he seeks to drive home those gains. The leader has sought to highlight Ukraine’s success in intercepting Russian missiles, saying more than half of the missiles and drones launched at Ukraine in a second wave of strikes on Tuesday were brought down.

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.

NATO Allies provided the Ukrainian air defense systems that shot down many incoming missiles this week, he said.

The IRIS-T that arrived this week from Germany and the NASAMS expected from the United States is a badly needed modern system.

Russian air defense, intelligence and military assistance in Donetsk, Ukraine after a “terrorist attack” during a presidential visit to Ukraine

“There are many things Russia can do to make the war personal, not just for people of Ukraine but around Europe, to try to force pressure on governments to remove their support for Ukraine,” Giles said.

On the front line, “the key hotspots in Donbas are (neighboring towns) In his video address Sunday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that fighting continued in Soledar and Bakhmut.

Zelenskyy accused Russia of including convicts “with long sentences for serious crimes” in its front-line troops in return for pay and amnesty — something Western intelligence officials have also asserted.

The municipal mayor’s building in Donetsk was seriously damaged by the rocket attack. Plumes of smoke swirled around the building, which had rows of blown-out windows and a partially collapsed ceiling. Cars nearby were burned out. There were no immediate reports of casualties. The attack did not result in any claims of responsibility or comment by the city of Kyiv.

Kremlin-backed separatist authorities have accused Ukraine of numerous strikes on infrastructure and residential targets in the occupied regions using U.S.-supplied long-range HIMARS rockets.

The office of Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Moscow was shelling towns and villages in the eastern part of the country and that hostilities continued in the southern Kherson region.

Russia opened an investigation into the shooting on Saturday in which 11 people dead and 15 wounded, two of them fatally, and two men from a former Soviet republic who were training to shoot at targets killed themselves. The Russian Defense Ministry called the incident a terrorist attack.

— France, seeking to puncture perceptions that it has lagged in supporting Ukraine, confirmed it’s pledging air-defense missiles and stepped-up military training to Ukraine. Up to 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers will be embedded with military units in France, rotating through for several weeks of combat training, specialized training in logistics and other needs, and training on equipment supplied by France, the French defense minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said in an interview published in Le Parisien.

The Institute for the Study of War in Washington said late Saturday that Russia was likely to be conducting ethnic cleansing with the forced deportations of Ukrainians.

It referenced statements made this week by Russian authorities that claimed that several thousand children from a southern region of Moscow had been put in rest homes and children’s camps during the Ukrainian counteroffensive. RIA Novosti reported the original comments made by Russia’s deputy prime minister.

Russian authorities have said before they put children from Russian-held areas of Ukraine who were orphans, for adoption with Russian families in a potential violation of the international treaty on genocide prevention.

— The Ukrainian military accused pro-Kremlin fighters of evicting civilians in occupied territories to house officers in their homes, an act it described as a violation of international humanitarian law. It said that the evictions were happening in the eastern Luhansk region. It didn’t give any evidence for its claim.

— A Russian commander wanted for his role in the downing of a Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine in 2014 has been deployed to the front, according to social media posts by pro-Kremlin commentators. Posts by Maksim Fomin and others state that there is a Russian front-line unit, and that it has been assigned to Mr. Strelkov.

There is a international wanted list for Girkin, who is alleged to have been involved in the downing of the Kuala Lumpur-bound flight. He remains the most high-profile suspect in a related murder trial in a Dutch court, with a verdict expected Nov. 17.

The social media posts lashed out at Moscow’s battlefield failures. Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency said Sunday it would offer a $100,000 reward to anyone who captures him.

“I can’t tell you how hard it is to escape”: Vladimir Surovikin, the commander of the Osimir forces in Ukraine, speaks with Zvezda media

Saldo offered residents the option of relocating to cities “in any part of Russia,” and said the Russian government would provide housing vouchers to those who wished to move further from the fighting.

“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.

The two sides are facing each other over the Dnipro river with a distance of 250 kilometers from Zaporizhzhia Nuclear power plant to the edge of the Black Sea.

In his first interview since being appointed to lead Russia’s armed forces in Ukraine Oct. 8, General Sergei Surovikin called the situation in Kherson “very difficult” and refused to rule out “the hardest decisions.”

Surovikin — who has overseen the mass bombardment of Ukrainian cities since taking over — accused Kyiv of targeting civilians and said Russia’s focus was now on saving lives.

The goal of the operation will be to maximize the safety of civilians and soldiers. That is our priority,” Surovikin said to the Zvezda channel, a state media outlet funded by Russia’s Defense Ministry.

Events in Kherson and Kharkiv have shown that the Ukrainians possess tactical agility that seems alien to the Russian way of war, as well as far superior battlefield intelligence.

“I still can’t believe that I left there,” says Viktor, while pulling a red suitcase from the black car he rode to Zaporizhia, about 25 miles from occupied territory. “The madness.”

His home is close to Kherson. He and his wife were parents to three girls there. The Russians broke into their house within hours of them leaving, Viktor says a neighbor told him.

Artyom’s eldest son, Kherson, is not fine: A Ukrainian boy’s cry about war and Russians’ curse

At the shelter, a volunteer with the middle name Artyom helped care for the evacuees as if they were his own family. Artyom wants us not to use his full name to protect his relatives in Kherson.

His wife generally stays home as much as she can. She sells potatoes and vegetables at the street market to make money.

But Artyom says it’s not fine. He counts his fingers, because he fears that the Russians will stop his wife. He worries that she’ll get sick. She’s four months’ pregnant. He is worried about the baby.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/07/1134465380/kherson-ukraine-russia-battle-looms

“I Want to Live” in Kherson, Ukraine: A Soldier’s Perspective at the First Russian Army Reaction since the Second World War

Holovnya, who is living in Kyiv, calls some of them collaborators. He says some people can’t leave. Many are older. Others have few resources. His life right now is intense.

The city now has little public interaction because the local street markets are the main place to go. Most of the stores in Kherson are either closed or have empty shelves, so local farmers and bakers have been selling and trading items at the street markets.

“You can buy most things, from starting with medicine and finishing with meat,” says Natalyia Schevchenko, 30, who fled Kherson this summer. It’s terrible to watch. On one car, they cut meat and sell medicine on the hood.

The volunteer who is helping to evacuate people from Kherson remains in touch with those in the city. She says her grandmother, who refused to leave, gives her regular updates.

Artyom and his wife talk whenever they can. They worry that Russians are listening in and try to keep their conversations light.

They agree that it’s a good thing. They think it means the Ukrainians are getting closer — and that means Artyom may be able to go home soon.

YaroslavYanushevych, the exiled Ukranian head of the Kherson regional military administration, blamed Russian troops after state media in Russia reported that Ukrainian shelling had damaged power lines.

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.

Some 250,000 people lived in the city before the war. It is not possible to know how accurate estimates of 30,000 to 60,000 people are.

It was the biggest success in the early days of the war when Russian forces crossed the Dnipro River and entered Kherson city. 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 agency offered Russian soldiers who were abandoned by their military leadership and still in Kherson the chance to protect their rights through a program called “I Want to Live.”

You were ordered to wear civilian clothes and flee Kherson. Obviously, you won’t succeed,” the Ukrainian statement said.

The Antonivsky Bridge is the only road crossing over the Dnipro that has been damaged. Satellite images released by Maxar Technologies appeared to show a section of the bridge was completely sheared off.

Plans to withdraw from Kherson were suggested by the commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine to Sergei Shoigu.

Russian troops still have tens of thousands on the ground in eastern Europe, and it will take at least one week for the city to be free of them, the Ukrainian defense minister said in an interview.

The Russian withdrawal is thought to be a blow to Putin’s war effort in Ukraine.

Russia still however retains control of about 60% of the Kherson region, south and east of the Dnipro, including the coastline along the Sea of Azov. If Moscow maintains control of the Dnipro riverbank, Ukrainian forces will struggle to disrupt the canal that delivers fresh water to the peninsula.

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 cheering and awaiting the arrival of a contingent of Ukrainian troops shortly after Russia said that the withdrawal of its forces across the Dnipro River was complete.

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.

The commander of the Ukrainian drones said that there were no Russian troops or equipment in his area, which is north of Kherson city.

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 see how they are leaving. They retreat quietly at night.

Several explosions and chaotic and confused were what the residents of Kherson said about the final hours of the Russian occupation.

Serhiy, a retiree living in the city who asked that his last name not be published for security reasons, said in a series of text messages that conditions in the city had unraveled overnight.

He wrote that a building burned in the center but it was not possible to call the fire department. There was no heat, no water, no electricity, and no phone signal.

The Dnieper River: Russian Forces on the West Bank of the Tyahinka River, in the Nearby Region of Kherson

Ukrainian officials have warned that Russia may have left a contingent of soldiers behind disguised as civilians to engage the Ukrainians in street battles or stage sabotage operations.

The report said that Russian forces had set up defensive positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro and were shelling Ukrainians across the river.

On Friday evening, Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine, posted a video of celebrations in Kherson where a crowd was waving flags and chanting the name of the armed forces.

“Not a single piece of military equipment or weaponry was left behind on the right [west] bank,” the statement added. “All Russian servicemen have moved to the left bank of the Dnieper.”

There have been no reports of incoming fire from the east bank Friday but there was a missile attack on the city of Mykolaiv that killed seven people.

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.

The video, seen on social media on Friday, shows Ukrainian forces being welcomed by residents on the main highway in Tyahinka. The village is just 14 miles (20 km) west of the hydroelectric dam and bridges that stretch across the Dnieper river at Nova Kakhovka.

Residents of the town of Bilozerka, on the western outskirts of Kherson city, raised a Ukrainian flag and ripped down Russian propaganda billboards on Friday, according to videos on social media geolocated by CNN.

The officials of the capital of Ukraine warned that the city of Kherson could become a “city of death” if Russian troops retreated and an official in southern Ukraine warned people against returning to recently liberated territory.

“There are a lot of mines in the liberated territories and settlements,” Vitaliy Kim, head of Mykolaiv region military administration, said on Telegram. Don’t go there for no reason. There are casualties.”

The Russian Federation in Ukraine: The last four days, the east bank of the Dnipro river is going to be ruined, but Ukrainian forces are still fighting

A subject of the Russian Federation is what’s said during the daily briefing with journalists. It was legally fixed and defined. There can be no changes here.”

The relatively few residents who remain in Kherson have endured curfews, shortages of goods, partisan warfare and an intense campaign to force them to become Russian citizens and accept Moscow’s warped version of their culture and history.

The level of their suffering hasn’t been brought into focus. For months, residents interviewed by journalists have told stories of friends being abducted, children illegally deported, relatives tortured and killed. When Russian have pulled out elsewhere in Ukraine, evidence of human rights abuses has eventually surfaced.

The pullout would protect civilians and troops, who have been attacked by the Ukrainian counteroffensive that hit Russian depots and command posts, disrupting their supply lines.

President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed Friday as “a historic day” for Ukraine. Zelensky stated that we are returning the south of our country.

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 also have a massive task of reconstruction ahead in Kherson, where Russian forces destroyed critical infrastructure and left a huge number of mines behind.

On Friday, Maxar Technologies satellite images and other photos showed at least seven bridges, four of them crossing the Dnipro, have been destroyed in the last 24 hours.

The east bank of the river has seen new damage to the critical dam that spans Dnipro in the Kherson region city of Nova Kakhovka. For weeks, both sides have accused the other of planning to breach the dam, which if destroyed would lead to extensive flooding on the east bank and deprive the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia of water to cool its reactors.