Ukrainian police return to long-occupied TV station Kherson

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Mykolaiv, Ukraine — Ukrainian police returned to the southern city of Kherson on Saturday following the withdrawal of Russian troops, along with television and radio services. This is part of a swift and deliberate effort to make the only provincial capital occupied by Russia more livable after months of occupation. It is described as a tragedy.

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People across Ukraine awoke from a night of jubilation after the Kremlin announced that its troops had withdrawn from Kherson across the Dnieper. The Ukrainian military said it was overseeing “stabilization measures” around the city to ensure its security.

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The Russian withdrawal comes about six weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed the Kherson region and three other provinces in southern and eastern Ukraine in violation of international law and declared them Russian territory. It represented a serious setback for the Kremlin.

Head of the Ukrainian National Police Ihor Klimenko said on Facebook on Saturday that about 200 police officers are working in the city, setting up checkpoints and recording evidence of possible war crimes. . A police team is also working to identify and neutralize the unexploded ordnance, and one engineer was injured Saturday during a demining of the administration building, Klymenko said.

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Ukraine’s communications surveillance agency said state television and radio broadcasts had resumed, and an adviser to the Kherson mayor said humanitarian aid and supplies had started arriving from the neighboring Mykolaiv region.

However, adviser Roman Khorobnya described the situation in Kherson as a “humanitarian catastrophe”. He said the remaining residents lacked water, medicine and food, and that important basics such as bread were not baked due to lack of electricity.

“The occupiers and collaborators did everything possible to make those who remained in the city suffer as much as possible in the days, weeks and months until the arrival of the Ukrainian army,” Horovnya said. Told. “The water supply is virtually non-existent.”

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The chairman of the region’s pre-war power company, Hersono Brenergo, said power was being returned “to all settlements in the Kherson region immediately after liberation”.

Despite efforts to restore normal civilian life, Russian forces remain nearby. The Ukrainian Army General Staff said on Saturday that Russian forces were consolidating their fronts on the east bank of the river after abandoning the capital. About 70% of the Kherson region is still under Russian control.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address on Saturday that Ukrainian forces had established control over more than 60 settlements in the Kherson region and that “stabilization measures are also underway in Kherson itself.”

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“Anywhere in the liberated territory, our explosives engineers have a lot of work to do. Nearly 2,000 explosives have already been removed,” Zelensky said. “Before fleeing Kherson, the occupiers destroyed all vital infrastructure such as communications, water supply, heat and electricity.”

Pictures on Saturday on social media showed Ukrainian activists removing a monument erected by the occupation authorities set up by the Kremlin to run the Kherson region. A Telegram post for the Ukrainian resistance movement Yellow Ribbon showed two men tearing down a plaque depicting Soviet-era soldiers in a park.

Moscow’s announcement that Russian troops would withdraw across the Dnieper River, which divides both the Kherson region and Ukraine, followed a reinforced Ukrainian counterattack in the south of the country. In the past two months, the Ukrainian army claimed to have reclaimed dozens of towns and villages north of Kherson city, where the military said stabilization operations were taking place.

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Khenichesk, a city on the Sea of ​​Azov 200 kilometers southeast of Kherson, now serves as the region’s “temporary capital,” a senior Kherson Kremlin-appointed government official said Saturday, according to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency. I told him.

The Ukrainian media mocked the announcement, with Ukrainian newspaper Pravda saying that Russia had “created a new capital” for the region.

A large part of Ukraine, as withdrawal from Kherson and other areas west of the Dnieper would have dashed Russia’s hopes of intensifying its western offensive into Mykolaiv and Odesa and cutting off Ukraine’s access to the Civil War. A moment of jubilation marked the withdrawal of Russian troops. Black Sea.

In the Black Sea port of Odessa, residents wore Ukrainian blue-and-yellow flags, shared champagne and held flag-colored cards bearing the word “Kherson.”

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But like Zelensky, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleva tried to temper the excitement.

“We are winning the battle on the ground, but the war continues,” he said from Cambodia, who was attending a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Kuleva raised the possibility that Ukrainian forces would find evidence of possible Russian war crimes in Kherson, similar to what Russia did after its withdrawal in the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions.

“Every time we liberate a piece of territory, when we enter a city liberated from Russian forces, we find torture chambers and mass graves of civilians who were tortured and killed by Russian forces during their occupation.” It is not easy to talk to such people, but I said that all wars end with diplomacy and Russia must negotiate in good faith.”

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Tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers may have already been killed or injured in Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to a US assessment this week.

Elsewhere, Russia is continuing its steady offensive in eastern Ukraine’s industrial zone, targeting the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, said the Chief of the General Staff of Ukraine.

Donetsk governor Pablo Kirilenko said on Saturday that two civilians were killed and four wounded in the final days as fighting escalated around Bakhmut and Avdiuka, small cities still in Ukrainian hands. .

Russia’s move to acquire Bakhmut signals the Kremlin’s desire for tangible gains after weeks of setbacks. It would also pave the way for other Ukrainian strongholds in the hotly contested Donetsk region.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region west of Donetsk, Russian troops have again shelled communities near the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the Ukrainian regional governor said.