According to Russia, it did not lose any soldiers during the withdrawal from Kherson. According to Ukraine, the withdrawal was chaotic and Russian soldiers drowned.
In the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv, people celebrated the liberation of the strategically important Kherson from Russian troops on Friday evening.
Soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces arrived earlier in the day in the center of Kherson, after the Russian troops had withdrawn from the city.
In Kyiv, the revelers sang the national anthem of Ukraine and the song Stefania by Kalush Orchestra, who won the Eurovision Song Contest.
– We are happy. We thank the Armed Forces of Ukraine. We thank everyone, said an evacuee from Kherson Oksana news agency Reuters.
Escaped from Kherson to Kyiv Sergiy Romanenko said that the people of Kherson have been waiting for this moment for eight months.
Ukrainians filled social media with celebratory messages. Many companies and official institutions, from the Post Office to the National Anti-Corruption Agency, added images of watermelons to their profiles.
The Kherson region is known in Ukraine for its tasty watermelons.
Russia announced that it had pulled 30,000 troops across the Dnieper without losing a single man. According to Ukraine, the withdrawal was chaotic and some Russian soldiers threw away their weapons and uniforms. According to Ukraine, Russian soldiers also drowned when they tried to escape.
Kherson province is one of the four regions that the president Vladimir Putin claimed to have joined Russia at the end of September. Kherson is also a strategically important region through which you can reach Crimea by land, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it has set up defensive lines on the east side of the Dnieper River. Russia hopes to be able to defend them better than the stations on the west side of the river.
Source: Reuters