Zelensky on victory in Kherson: ‘Today is a historic day’

After the withdrawal of Russian soldiers, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has reported a further advance of his own troops on the regional capital Kherson in the south of the country.

“Today is a historic day,” Zelensky said in his video address on Friday evening. The city has not yet been completely liberated from the “presence of the enemy,” he explained, but Ukrainian special forces are already on the ground, he said.

The residents of Kherson also removed Russian symbols from streets and buildings.

Zelensky also released a video purporting to show car parades and cheering choruses for the advancing Ukrainian soldiers. “The people of Kherson have been waiting. They never gave up on Ukraine,” he said. “It will be the same in the cities that are still waiting for us to take them back.”

Under pressure from Ukrainian counteroffensives, Russia had announced the withdrawal of its own troops from the part of Kherson north-west of the Dnipro river last Wednesday. The regional capital of the same name, Kherson, is also located there.

For the first time since the beginning of the war, Russia has lost a large part of a territory that it annexed in violation of international law and later annexed as its own national territory.