After more than eight months of Russian occupation, the Ukrainian army announced its entry into the city of Kherson on Friday, November 11, after the forced withdrawal of Russian soldiers. This is a major setback for Moscow. “Kherson returns to Ukrainian control, Ukrainian Armed Forces units enter the city”announced the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, calling on the Russian soldiers who remained on the spot to “surrender immediately”.
“Kherson is Ukraine!”enthused the mayor of kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, while the head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kouleba, welcomed a “important victory“, by broadcasting images, according to him, of the locality of Bilozerka, a few kilometers from the city of Kherson. We see residents tearing down a gigantic poster proclaiming. “Russia is here forever.”
>> War in Ukraine: the Russian withdrawal from Kherson, “an extremely powerful symbolic success” for kyiv and its army
This withdrawal is the third in magnitude since the start of the invasion on February 24, Russia having had to give up in the spring to take kyiv, before having to abandon almost all of the Kharkiv region, in September, under pressure of the Ukrainian army.
Earlier, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it had completed “the redeployment” of its units from the right (western) bank of the Dnieper River, where Kherson is located, to the left bank, ensuring that they have not suffered any loss or abandoned military equipment. In total, according to this source, “over 30,000” Russian soldiers and “nearly 5,000 units of armaments and military vehicles have been withdrawn” from the western bank of the Dnipro.
The state news agency Ria Novosti broadcast nighttime footage of Russian military vehicles leaving Kherson, indicating that they were crossing the Antonovsky Bridge spanning the Dnipro River. Several Russian correspondents then declared, with supporting images, that part of the viaduct had been dynamited to hinder the progress of Ukrainian troops. The Ukraine had pounded this bridge for weeks with its artillery, without being able to destroy it, in order to cut the Russian supply lines and force Moscow to withdraw.
This withdrawal, however, has all the snub, Vladimir Putin having claimed at the end of September the annexation of four Ukrainian regions, including that of Kherson. Despite this retreat, the area remains “a subject of the Russian Federation”Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “There can be no change”he added in the first commentary of the Russian presidency on this withdrawal.