(Kherson) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russian forces of committing “atrocities” in Kherson, days after the Ukrainians recaptured the city.
Updated yesterday at 9:25 p.m.
“The bodies of those killed are found: those of civilians and soldiers. In the Kherson region, the Russian army left behind the same atrocities as in other regions of our country, where it was able to enter,” Zelensky said Sunday evening during his daily address.
He added that 400 Russian “war crimes” had been documented, without specifying whether they concerned only the Kherson region.
Many residents of the city told AFP on the spot that the Russian forces, which finished evacuating the city on Friday after eight months of presence, have sown desolation there.
“They looted all the apartments, they destroyed the doors, they lived in the apartments. They took all the electronic equipment. They are thieves”, enrages Svetlana Vilna, 47, who says she “felt like in prison for nine months”.
Oleg Nazarenko, 25, says that “young people were arrested and searched. They terrorized us. They were worse than the fascists. It was like that”.
A 30-year-old philosophy student, who says his name is Andrïi, assures us that “now we have no electricity in the city, no water, no central heating, no mobile connection, no internet connection, but we we don’t have Russians, and I’m extremely happy about that”.
great relief
President Zelensky had accused the Russians on Saturday evening of having destroyed essential infrastructure before fleeing.
We are in the process of restoring communications, internet, television and we are doing everything possible to restore the supply of electricity and water as quickly as possible.
Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine
In this energy and logistical chaos, jubilation had prevailed since Friday. Ukrainian flags, hugs with soldiers from Kyiv, horns and whistles still brightened up the city on Sunday, AFP noted.
You could also see destroyed military vehicles, mutilated buildings, and smell the smell of burning wood in this strategic Black Sea port, where war was still raging a few days ago. On Sunday, the population expressed above all a great relief to see the occupier gone.
As queues stretch outside food and emergency aid distribution posts, many adults and children move through the streets wrapped in blue and yellow flags.
Some are gathered in the main square of the city, in order to communicate with their loved ones via the Starlink satellite internet service, owned by Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla and Twitter.
“I need to reconnect with my family,” says Klavdia Mych, a 69-year-old retired teacher. “We haven’t had water for a week,” she adds. And they say that everything is mined: it’s scary.
On Facebook, Oleksandr Todorchuk, founder of UAnimals, an animal rights movement, claims that the occupants left, taking with them “most of the animals from the zoo to Crimea. [territoire ukrainien annexé par Moscou en 2014]from llamas to wolves to squirrels.
After the successive military setbacks of the Russian army since the summer, the Russian withdrawal from Kherson is an even greater humiliation for the Kremlin since the region of this great city is one of the four annexed by Russia in violation of international law following its invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.
This is the third large-scale Russian withdrawal since the start of the war, Russia having given up in the spring to take Kyiv in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance, before being driven out of almost the entire Kharkiv region. (northeast) in September.
“Additional Lines of Defense”
Ukrainian armed forces regained control of dozens of localities in the Kherson region, which had been the first major city to fall after the Russian invasion.
After the evacuation of Kherson, on the western bank of the Dnieper, an evacuation order to Russia’s Krasnodar region near Crimea was issued by pro-Russian local authorities on Saturday evening to their district employees. from Kakhovka, on the eastern bank of the river.
During the night from Sunday to Monday, the southern command of the Ukrainian army affirmed that the Russian forces continued to “establish a defense on the left bank of the Dnieper” and “additional lines of defense at several levels to hold the occupied borders.
Moscow “continues to inflict fire damage on our troops and liberated localities along the right bank of the Dnieper using aviation, heavy artillery, MLRS (rocket launchers, editor’s note) and mortars”, he said. added.
On the diplomatic level, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Monday, on the eve of the G20 summit in Indonesia, that ending the war in Ukraine was “simply the best thing to do for the global economy”.
The invasion launched nine months ago by Russian President Vladimir Putin has profound economic repercussions, with soaring energy and food prices.
Officially, the invasion of Ukraine is not on the agenda of the club of 20 major economies whose leaders meet on Tuesday and Wednesday on the Indonesian island of Bali. Moscow has also called on the G20 to focus on economic and financial issues rather than political and security issues.