According to the President, the Ukrainian troops have now recaptured around 60 towns in the Cherson region. Around 200 police officers were sent to Cherson to erect roadblocks and “document the crimes of the Russian occupiers,” said police chief Igor Klymenko.
Klymenko warned residents about the explosive devices left behind by Russian forces. A police officer was injured during a mine clearance in an administrative building in Kherson. According to police, a woman and two children were also injured in an explosion near their car in the village of Mylove in the Kherson region.
Around nine months after the start of the war, Moscow had ordered the withdrawal from Cherson and the north of the region of the same name in view of the progress of the Ukrainian counter-offensive. The Russian army evacuated the regional capital on Friday morning. In the evening, Zelenskyj declared that Cherson belonged to “our people” again.
The withdrawal represented a bitter defeat for Russia. Cherson was the only regional capital that the Russian troops had captured. For Moscow, the region is also of great strategic importance in order to be able to continue the offensive in the direction of Mykolaiv and the Black Sea port of Odessa.
