Zelenskyy says Ukrainian special military units in Kherson

MYKOLAIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s president said Friday that special military units have entered Kherson, a major regional capital that Russian forces had captured early in the war. Residents took to the streets to celebrate Russia’s withdrawal, the latest pullback by Moscow as it faces intense resistance.

In a video address hours after Russia said it had completed withdrawing troops from the strategically key city, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said: “As of now, our defenders are approaching the city. In quite a bit, we are going to enter. But special units are already in the city.”

Russia relinquished its final foothold in the major city, one of the first to be captured in the invasion that began Feb. 24. The withdrawal could act as a springboard for further advances into occupied territory.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its troops finished withdrawing from the western bank of the river that divides Ukraine’s Kherson region at 5 a.m. The area they left included the city of Kherson, the only provincial capital Russia had captured during its nearly nine-month invasion of Ukraine.

Videos and photos on social media showed residents jubilantly taking to the streets, waving Ukrainian flags and chanting in celebration. A Ukrainian flag flew over a monument in a central Kherson square for the first time since the city was seized in early March. Some footage showed crowds cheering men in military uniform and tossing one man wearing combat fatigues up in the air. Other videos showed villagers embracing troops en route to the city.

Ukrainian officials have not yet confirmed the city was in Ukrainian hands.

Zelenskyy said Russian forces placed mines in the city and that after troops enter they will be followed by sappers, rescue workers and energy personnel. Despite the daunting tasks ahead, “Medicine, communications, social services are returning. … Life is returning,” he said.

Ukrainian intelligence urged Russian soldiers who might still be in the city to surrender in anticipation of Ukrainian forces arriving. “Your command left you to the mercy of fate,” it said in a statement.

A Ukrainian regional official, Serhii Khlan, disputed the Russian Defense Ministry’s claim that its 30,000 retreating troops took all 5,000 pieces of equipment with them, saying “a lot” of hardware got left behind.

The final Russian withdrawal came six weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed the Kherson region and three other Ukrainian provinces, vowing they would remain Russian forever. Moscow’s forces still control about 70% of the Kherson region.

In Kyiv, celebrations on the capital’s main square continued into the night, with people popping open wine bottles and shouting “Glory to Ukraine.” Some expressed surprise at the speed of events.

“I thought the Russian army would defend and there’d be a kind of siege like in Mariupol,” the eastern port devastated in weeks of battle, said Andrey Trach, a resident of Odessa who works in Kyiv. “It’s a very significant day for Ukraine because it shows the entire world that Ukraine can and definitely will defend every square kilometer and inch of territory.”

French President Emmanuel Macron sent tweets in French and Ukrainian saluting Ukraine’s recapture of Kherson, calling it “an important step toward the full restoration of its sovereign rights.”

The Kremlin remained defiant Friday, insisting the withdrawal in no way represented an embarrassment for Putin. Moscow continues to view the entire Kherson region as part of Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

He added that the Kremlin doesn’t regret holding festivities to celebrate the annexation of occupied or partially occupied regions of Ukraine, deferring all questions about the Kherson withdrawal to the Defense Ministry.

Putin has so far been silent about Kherson, despite making several public appearances since the withdrawal was announced.

Shortly before the Russian announcement, Zelenskyy’s office described the situation in the province as “difficult.” It reported Russian shelling of villages and towns Ukrainian forces reclaimed in recent weeks during their counteroffensive in the Kherson region.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s army said the Russian forces left looted homes, damaged power lines and mined roads in their wake. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak had predicted the departing Russians would seek to turn Kherson into a “city of death” and would continue to shell it after relocating across the Dnieper River.

Some quarters of the Ukrainian government barely disguised their glee at the pace of the Russian withdrawal.

“The Russian army leaves the battlefields in a triathlon mode: steeplechase, broad jumping, swimming,” Andriy Yermak, a senior presidential adviser, tweeted. Social media videos showed villagers hugging Ukrainian troops.

Recapturing Kherson city could provide Ukraine a strong position from which to expand its southern counteroffensive to other Russian-occupied areas, potentially including Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014.

From its forces’ new positions on the eastern bank, however, the Kremlin could try to escalate the war, which U.S. assessments showed may already have killed or wounded tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

Gen. Ben Hodges, former commanding general of U.S. Army forces in Europe, described the Russian retreat as a “colossal failure” and said he expects Ukrainian commanders will keep pressure on Russia’s depleted forces ahead of a possible future push for Crimea next year.

“It’s too early to be planning the victory parade, for sure. But I would expect by the end of this year — so in the next, let’s say, eight weeks — the Ukrainians are going to be in place to start setting the conditions for the decisive phase of this campaign, which is the liberation of Crimea, which I think will happen by the summer,” he said in a telephone interview.

Meanwhile, a Russian S-300 missile strike overnight killed seven people in Mykolaiv, about 68 kilometers (42 miles) from Kherson’s regional capital, Zelenskyy’s office said. Rescue crews sifted through the rubble of a five-story residential building in search of survivors.

Standing in front of what used to be his family’s apartment, Roman Mamontov awaited news about his missing mother.

The 16-year-old said he found “nothing there” when he opened the door to look for his mother after the missile struck. Friday was her 34th birthday.

“My mind was blank at that moment. I thought it could not be true,” he said. “The cake she prepared for the celebration is still there.”

Zelenskyy called the missile strike “the terrorist state’s cynical response to our successes at the front.”

“Russia does not give up its despicable tactics. And we will not give up our struggle. The occupiers will be held to account for every crime against Ukraine and Ukrainians,” Zelenskyy said.

The Russian Defense Ministry didn’t acknowledge striking a residential building in Mykolaiv, saying only that an ammunition depot was destroyed “in the area of the city.”

Mykolaiv mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych told the AP that Russia could step up its shelling of his city. “The more success the Ukrainian army has, Russia lowers its bar of terrorism,” he said.

Sienkevych said that S-300 missiles launched from the Kherson region can reach Mykolaiv within one minute. Some 149 civilians have been killed and 700 people seriously wounded in the city since the invasion began.

The president’s office said Russian drones, rockets and heavy artillery strikes across eight regions killed at least 14 civilians between Thursday morning and Friday morning.

Also Friday, Zelenskyy’s deputy chief of staff, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said construction has begun on a barrier of concrete posts topped with barbed wire along the border with Belarus. Russia used Belarus as a staging area for troops and weapons when it invaded Ukraine and concerns persist that Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko may send troops to Ukraine.

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Leicester reported from Kyiv. Sam Mednick in Kyiv and Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed.

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