Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Ukraine police, TV back in Kherson
Official: City ‘a humanitarian catastrophe’ in wake of Russian withdrawal
MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian police officers returned Saturday, along with TV and radio services, to the southern city of Kherson following the withdrawal of Russian troops, part of fast but cautious efforts to make the only regional capital captured by Russia livable after months of occupation. Yet one official still described the city as “a humanitarian catastrophe.”
People across Ukraine awoke from a night of jubilant celebrating after the Kremlin announced its troops had withdrawn to the other side of the Dnieper River from Kherson. The Ukrainian military said it was overseeing “stabilization measures” around the city to make sure it was safe.
The Russian retreat represented a significant setback for the Kremlin 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 national police chief of Ukraine, Ihor Klymenko, said Saturday on Facebook that about 200 officers were at work in the city, setting up checkpoints and documenting evidence of possible war crimes. Police teams also were working to identify and neutralize unexploded ordnance.
Ukraine’s communications watchdog said national TV and radio broadcasts had resumed, and an adviser to Kherson’s mayor said humanitarian aid and supplies had begun to arrive from the neighboring Mykolaiv region.
But the adviser, Roman Holovnya, described the situation in Kherson as “a humanitarian catastrophe.” He said the remaining residents lacked water, medicine and food — and key basics such a bread went unbaked because a lack of electricity.
The chairman of Khersonoblenergo, the region’s prewar power provider, said electricity was being returned “to every settlement in the Kherson region immediately after the liberation.”
Despite the efforts to restore normal civilian life, Russian forces remain close by. The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said Saturday the Russians were fortifying their battle lines on the river’s eastern bank after abandoning the capital.
About 70 percent of the Kherson region still remains under Russian control.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address Saturday that Ukrainian forces have established control of more than 60 settlements in the Kherson region and “stabilization measures are also ongoing in Kherson itself.”
“Everywhere in the liberated territory, our explosives technicians have a lot of work to do. Almost 2,000 explosive items have already been removed,” Zelenskyy said. “Before fleeing from Kherson, the occupiers destroyed all critical infrastructure — communication, water supply, heat, electricity.”
Moscow’s announcement that Russian forces were withdrawing across the Dnieper River, which divides both the Kherson region and Ukraine, followed a steppedup Ukrainian counteroffensive in the country’s south. In the last two months, Ukraine’s military claimed to have reclaimed dozens of towns and villages north of the city of Kherson, and the military said that’s where stabilization activities were taking place.
Across much of Ukraine, moments of jubilation marked the exit of Russian forces, since a retreat from Kherson and other areas on the Dnieper’s west bank would appear to shatter Russian hopes to press an offensive west to Mykolaiv and Odesa to cut off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea.
In Odesa, the Black Sea port, residents draped themselves in Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flags, shared champagne and held up flag-colored cards with the word “Kherson” on them.
But like Zelenskyy, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba sought to temper the excitement.
“We are winning battles on the ground, but the war continues,” he said from Cambodia, where he was attending a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
U.S. assessments this week showed Russia’s war in Ukraine may already have killed or wounded tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.