AGENCIES

Ukrainian troops advanced in the south yesterday after Moscow began one of the war’s biggest retreats, though Kyiv remained publicly wary, warning that fleeing Russians could turn Kherson into a “city of death”.

Ukraine’s army chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said Kyiv could not yet confirm whether Russia was indeed pulling out, but that Ukrainian troops had advanced 7 km in the past 24 hours and recaptured 12 settlements.

“We continue to conduct the offensive operation in line with our plan,” he wrote in a post on Telegram.

A small group of Ukrainian soldiers was shown on Ukraine’s state TV in the centre of the village of Snihurivka around 55 km north of Kherson city. They were greeted by dozens of residents in a square, with a Ukrainian flag fluttering from a pole behind them.

Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said yesterday he was waiting to see how Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson played out, but if confirmed, it would be “another victory for Ukraine”.

Petro Lupan, a Ukrainian volunteer distributing bread to residents along a nearby stretch of the front line north of Kherson, told Reuters he had just learned of the recapture of Snihurivka from a friend reached by phone there. “I can’t find words to describe my feelings,” the 46-year-old said.

Moscow ordered its troops on Wednesday to withdraw from the entire Russian-held pocket on the west bank of the Dnipro River, including Kherson city, the only regional capital Russia had captured in nine months of war.

Ukrainian officials have so far mostly been wary in public, warning that Russians may still be planning to sow destruction on their way out.

Mykhail Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said yesterday Russia wanted to turn Kherson into a “city of death”, mining everything from apartments to sewers and planning to shell the city from the other side of the river.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country is moving “very carefully” in response to Moscow’s announcement.

Russia’s retreat order, just over a month after President Vladimir Putin proclaimed the annexation of an area he said would be part of Russia forever, is one of the most humiliating defeats Moscow has suffered so far.