Saturday, Ukrainian police officers returned to the southern city of Kherson, along with TV and radio services, following the withdrawal of Russian forces, as part of rapid but cautious measures to make the only regional capital held by Russia inhabitable following months of occupation. Still, one official referred to the city as a “humanitarian disaster.”
People across Ukraine awakened after a night of joyous celebration following the Kremlin’s announcement that its forces had withdrawn from Kherson to the opposite side of the Dnieper River. The Ukrainian military stated that it was overseeing “stabilization actions” to ensure the safety of the city.
The Russian retreat marks a serious setback for the Kremlin six weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally grabbed and declared Russian territory the Kherson region and three other provinces in southern and eastern Ukraine.
Ihor Klymenko, the head of the Ukrainian National Police, stated on Facebook on Saturday that approximately 200 police were establishing checkpoints and compiling evidence of probable war crimes in the city. Klymenko stated that police teams were also working to find and neutralize explosive munitions, and that one sapper was injured Saturday while demining an administrative building.
The communications watchdog of Ukraine said that national television and radio broadcasts had restarted in the city, while a spokesman for Kherson’s mayor reported that humanitarian relief and supplies had begun to arrive from the neighboring Mykolaiv area.
Roman Holovnya, however, described the situation in Chernivtsi as a “humanitarian catastrophe.” He stated that the remaining residents needed water, medicine, and food, and that they were unable to bake bread due to a shortage of electricity.
“The occupiers and collaborators did everything necessary to ensure that those who stayed in the city endured as much suffering as possible during those days, weeks, and months of waiting,” Holovnya stated. The availability of water is nearly nonexistent.
The chairman of Khersonoblenergo, the region’s prewar power provider, stated that electricity would be restored “soon after liberation to every village in the Kherson region.”
Despite efforts to restore normalcy to the civilian population, Russian military remain in close proximity. After abandoning the capital, the General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces reported on Saturday that the Russians were strengthening their combat positions on the eastern bank of the river. Approximately 70% of the territory of Kherson remains under Russian control.
Special military units have reached the city of Kherson, but a full deployment to reinforce the advance soldiers is still in progress, according to Ukrainian officials from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on down. The Ukrainian intelligence agency believed that some Russian soldiers may have remained behind, using civilian attire to evade discovery.
“Even though the city has not yet been totally cleansed of enemy presence, the residents of Kherson are already removing Russian insignia and signs of the occupiers’ stay,” Zelenskyy stated in his nightly video message.
According to Zelenskyy, the initial phase of stability comprises demining activities. He stated that after “our defenders” – the army — entered Kherson, police, sappers, rescuers, and energy workers would follow.
He stated that healthcare, communications, and social services are returning. “The restoration of life.”
Photos on social media On Saturday, Ukrainian protestors were seen dismantling memorial plaques erected by the Kremlin’s occupying authority in the Kherson region. A Telegram message from Yellow Ribbon, a Ukrainian “public resistance” campaign, depicted two individuals in a park removing plaques depicting Soviet-era military figures.
Following an intensified Ukrainian counteroffensive in the country’s south, Moscow said that Russian forces were evacuating across the Dnieper River, which separates the Kherson region from Ukraine.
In the last two months, the Ukrainian military claimed to have regained dozens of towns and villages north of the city of Kherson, where stabilization efforts were taking place, according to the military.
Henichesk, a city on the Azov Sea 200 kilometers southeast of Kherson, will act as the region’s “temporary capital,” according to an official in Kherson’s Kremlin-appointed administration, as reported by Russian state news agency Tass on Saturday.
The declaration was ridiculed by Ukrainian media, with the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper stating that Russia had “invented a new capital” for the region.
A retreat from Kherson and other regions on the west bank of the Dnieper would appear to thwart Russian plans to advance west to Mykolaiv and Odessa in order to shut off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea.
In Odesa, the port city on the Black Sea, citizens covered themselves in blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags, sipped champagne, and displayed flag-colored cards bearing the word “Kherson.”
However, like Zelenskyy, Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, attempted to temper the euphoria.
“We are winning ground battles, but the conflict continues,” he stated from Cambodia, where he was attending an Association of Southeast Asian Nations convention.
Kuleba raised the possibility that the Ukrainian army would discover evidence of possible Russian war crimes in Kherson, just as it did following previous Russian withdrawals from the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions.
“Every time we free a piece of our territory, every time we enter a city liberated from the Russian army, we find torture rooms and mass graves filled with tortured and murdered civilians,” Ukraine’s top ambassador stated. “It’s difficult to converse with these individuals. However, I stated that every war ends via diplomacy and that Russia must approach negotiations with good will.”
Russia’s war in Ukraine may have already killed or wounded tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers, according to assessments conducted by the United States this week.
According to the Ukrainian General Staff, Russia continued its offensive in the industrial east of Ukraine, targeting the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk area.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Donetsk, stated on Saturday that two civilians were killed and four were injured as fighting intensified outside Bakhmut and Avdiivka, a small city under Ukrainian control.
Following weeks of failures, Russia’s ongoing push for Bakhmut illustrates the Kremlin’s hunger for visible wins. It would also pave the way for a prospective offensive against other Ukrainian strongholds in the contested Donetsk region.
The Ukrainian regional governor stated that Russia once again shelled towns near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the Dnipropetrovsk region west of Donetsk.