Ukrainian troops raced into Kherson in southern Ukraine on Friday after Moscow said the Russian retreat from the city was complete. In a humiliating setback for Vladimir Putin, his forces appeared to have completely withdrawn from the only provincial capital his army captured in eight months of war. Video circulating on social media shows people celebrating with Ukrainian flags in a city square. A video showed crowds embracing the arriving Ukrainian soldiers. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared it a “historic day” in a speech to the nation as crowds celebrated in central Kiev. “The inhabitants of Chersona were waiting. They never left Ukraine. Hope for Ukraine is always justified – and Ukraine always recovers its own,” he said.

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Mr Zelensky shared nighttime videos of celebrations in the city of Kherson with people waving flags and a crowd chanting “ZSU”, the Ukrainian acronym for the armed forces. Posting the video on his official Telegram account, Zelensky added: “Ours. Kherson is ours.” An afternoon update from the Ukrainian military said troops had advanced to the west bank of the Dnipro River. “The Ukrainian army is already in Kherson! Glory to Ukraine!” Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksiy Goncharenko tweeted around noon Friday after the first troops arrived in the city. A Ukrainian flag flew over a monument in Kherson’s main square for the first time since the city was seized in early March. But Ukrainian officials resisted the claim that the city was still fully in Ukrainian hands. Zelensky said on Friday night that “special units” were already in the city and more troops were arriving. He said Russian forces had laid mines in the city and that after the troops entered, fencers, rescuers and energy personnel would follow. Ukrainian soldiers are said to have entered the Sumensky district in the west of the city. @nexa_tv The arrival of Kiev troops in the key city was confirmed by Ukraine’s defense intelligence service, which said Kherson was coming back under Ukrainian control after being seized by Russian forces since March. He also threatened to “destroy” any Russian soldiers who resisted. “You have only one chance to avoid death – surrender immediately,” the Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app. It came shortly after Russian defense chiefs claimed they had completed a retreat from Kherson in a humiliating setback for Vladimir Putin’s invasion. The Ministry of Defense in Moscow announced that Russian troops had withdrawn from the western bank of the Dnipro River, the TASS news agency reported. In its daily briefing cited by Russian news agencies, the ministry said the withdrawal was completed at 5 a.m. Moscow time (2 a.m. GMT) on Friday morning. A senior Ukrainian official said its armed forces are in the final stages of retaking the western bank of the Dnipro River. He later said that the troops reached the river. Serhiy Khlan, deputy of the Kherson Regional Council, also told a briefing that many Russian soldiers were unable to leave the city of Kherson after months of occupation and had changed into civilian clothes. Russia ordered the withdrawal on Wednesday after it said efforts to maintain its position and troops were “futile” in the face of a growing Ukrainian counteroffensive. Earlier on Friday, Mr Putin’s escaping troops were reported to have blown up a key bridge over the Dnipro River to stop Ukrainian forces pursuing them as they retreated. Ukrainian army chiefs are also said to have aimed artillery barrages at Russian units as they headed to cross the river to its east bank. Some reports claimed that Russian units suffered heavy casualties as they withdrew. The video shows a section of the Antonovsky Bridge destroyed, while another suggests that Russian troops had retreated along a makeshift bridge near it. Ukraine’s public broadcaster cited local residents as saying early Friday that the Antonovsky Bridge had collapsed. The Suspilne TV station published a photo showing entire sections of the road bridge missing. The next road crossing of the Dnipro is more than 70 km (43 mi) from the city of Kherson. Ukrainian troops recaptured dozens of landmine settlements abandoned by Russian forces in the south of the country on Thursday, officials said, a day after Moscow announced the withdrawal from the strategic capital of Kherson province. There were signs late Thursday that Ukrainian forces were moving closer to the city of Kherson, a port at the mouth of the Dnipro River, Ukrainian military analyst Yuri Butusov said. The nearest Ukrainian reconnaissance patrols were less than 18 kilometers (11 miles) from the city, he said on the Telegram messaging app. “Ukrainian forces are trying to invade Kherson on the shoulders of the retreating enemy,” he added. “In the area of ​​the river crossings, where the Russian troops are concentrated, firefights break out.” It would take at least a week for Russia to withdraw from the city of Kherson in an orderly manner, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said. But if Mr Putin’s exit turns into a disaster, it could happen much more quickly. Russia still had 40,000 troops in the area and intelligence indicated that its forces remained in and around the city, Mr Reznikov added. Russia announced on Wednesday that it would withdraw from the west bank of the Dnipro that includes Kherson, the only regional capital Moscow has seized since invading Ukraine in February. A withdrawal would be the third time the smaller Ukrainian army has pushed back the Russians, who were blocked in the north in March from taking the capital Kyiv. Then, in September, Ukrainian troops drove Russian occupation forces out of parts of the northeastern region of Kharkiv. But as it retreated to the south of the country, the Russian army continued to strike civilian areas. Six people were killed in a Russian rocket attack on an apartment building in the city of Mykolaiv early Friday, Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said. Rescuers were digging through the wreckage for survivors, he wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Three impacts were heard early in the morning in the area, the first around 3 am. Pictures released by Mr Senkevych showed a gaping hole in the high-rise building and emergency workers combing through a mound of rubble. In London, the Ministry of Defense highlighted Mr Putin’s wave of missile attacks on Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure. In the latest intelligence update, it said: “Continued degradation of networks by Russian strikes will almost certainly have consequences for interconnected water and heating systems, which will be felt more by the civilian population during the winter as demand increases ». He added: “Russian strikes on electricity generation and transmission have a disproportionate impact on civilians in Ukraine, indiscriminately affecting critical functions such as healthcare and heating.” Kherson province is one of four that Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to have annexed in late September and which most countries have condemned as illegal. US President Joe Biden welcomed the news of Russia’s withdrawal on Wednesday, but on Thursday downplayed any suggestion of a short-term resolution to the war. “I don’t think the conflict will be resolved … until Putin leaves Ukraine,” Biden told reporters at the White House. Ukraine’s general staff said offensive actions in the direction of Kherson continued, but withheld details. President Volodymyr Zelensky said late Thursday that Ukrainian forces had liberated 41 settlements as they advanced south. The pioneers and pyrotechnicians were going to areas retaken by Russian forces to rid them of thousands of unexploded mines and munitions left behind, he added. About 170,000 square kilometers (66,000 square miles) remained for demining, Zelensky said, including places where fighting was still going on and “where the enemy will add mines before withdrawing, as is happening now with Kherson.” The Ukrainian-appointed governor of the region, Yaroslav Yanusevych, told Telegram that Russian troops “removed public equipment, destroyed power lines and wanted to leave a trap behind them.” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky, said Russia wanted to turn Kherson into a “city of death,” mining everything from apartments to sewers and planning to bombard the city from across the river. Russia denies it deliberately targeted civilians, although the conflict has killed thousands, displaced millions and pulverized Ukrainian towns and cities. “There is absolutely no evidence that a trap has been laid in Kherson,” said Volodymyr Molchanov, a commentator from Kherson, according to Ukraine’s national website Espreso TV. “Russian troops began to withdraw yesterday (Wednesday) … in their attempt to cross the Dnipro, the enemy is suffering huge losses.” A withdrawal in Kherson would free forces from both sides to fight elsewhere, military analysts said, and there was no sign that Moscow was done with what it calls “a special military operation” against its pro-Western neighbor. “It’s certainly a turning point, but it doesn’t mean that Russia has lost or that Ukraine has won,” said Ben Barry, senior fellow for land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Russia was still capable of another attack or counter-attacks, he said. “It’s too early to write them off.” A small group of Ukrainian soldiers were shown on Ukrainian state television being greeted by jubilant residents in the center of the village of Snihurivka, about 55 km (35 miles) north of the city of Kherson, with a Ukrainian flag flying over the square behind them. The success of Ukraine’s counterattacks will strengthen Kiev’s argument to the West to continue providing…