Europe

Zelenskiy hails ‘historic day’ as Ukrainian forces advance into Kherson

Russia completes retreat from key region in major setback for Putin

A Ukrainian soldier at a former Russian base filled with mortar rounds, ammunition, and discarded uniforms in Blahodatne, Ukraine, a village about 15 miles northwest of central Kherson, on Friday. Ukraine’s troops entered the key city of Kherson on Friday, its military said, as jubilant residents waved Ukrainian flags after a major Russian retreat. Photograph: Lynsey Addario/New York Times

Roman Olearchyk in Kyiv and Max Seddon in Riga
Fri Nov 11 2022 - 19:32

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 Mr Putin announced the annexation of Kherson and three other southeastern Ukrainian provinces in a lavish Kremlin ceremony.

Photographs and videos appeared on social media of Ukrainian troops in the centre of Kherson and civilians waving the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag on city streets to greet government soldiers.

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Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Friday evening described it as “a historic day”.

“Special units are already in the city,” he said in his daily video evening address to the nation. “The people of Kherson were waiting. They never gave up on Ukraine. Hope for Ukraine is always justified – and Ukraine always returns its own.”

A video posted on Friday afternoon on the Ukrainian military’s channel on the Telegram social media app showed a Ukrainian soldier in the city’s main square, standing above a cheering crowd and saying: “We greet you from Kherson”. People then hugged him and chanted: “Glory to the armed forces of Ukraine.”

Video footage posted by Russian military bloggers on Telegram showed the Antonivsky bridge, the main crossing over the Dnipro, had plunged into the river, forcing some Russian troops to cross on pontoons.

Antonina Ustymenko, 64, weeps as she talks about life under Russian occupation in Blahodatne, Ukraine, a village about 15 miles northwest of central Kherson, on Friday, Nov. 11, 2022. "We are glad we are free now,” she said. “When we saw our guys, we started to hug them. We saw that people in Kyiv live a normal life. Here we live in hell." (Lynsey Addario/The New York Times) — NO SALES —

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,” Mr Arestovych tweeted, adding: “Now, thousands of people, with their resources cut off and the possibility of retreat, are looking at a kilometre 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.

(PA Graphics)

Located on a delta where the Dnipro flows into the Black Sea, Kherson is a strategically important region that links Crimea, which Mr 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, Mr 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 swathes of territory that the Kremlin still claims is part of Russia.

Dmitry Peskov, Mr 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.

– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022

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