City celebrates liberation as scale of Russian destruction emerges

RESIDENTS of Kherson celebrated the end of Russia’s eight-month occupation for the third straight day yesterday, 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 yellowand-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.”

But even as locals rejoiced, the evidence of Russia’s occupation was all around, and Russian forces still control some 70 per cent 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 people venturing out carried yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flags. In a city 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 de-mining of critical infrastructure was under way in the city.

Reconnecting the electricity supply was the priority, with gas supplies already assured, Kherson 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 Zelenskyy 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 comes 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 US 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.

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.

For the first time in many months, I wasn’t scared to come into the city