Ukraine troops enter Kherson city hours after Russian withdrawal

Ukrainian soldiers have entered the strategic southern city of Kherson following Russian withdrawal, the country’s defence intelligence said on Friday , marking a major victory for Kyiv over Moscow that has held swathes of the region for eight months.Videos shared on Ukrainian Telegram groups showed crowds of ecstatic residents of the regional capital welcoming soldiers outside an administrative building. In the clips people could be heard shouting ‘ZSU’ the acronym for the Ukrainian armed forces.The country’s defence intelligence agency said in a statement to Reuters that the southern city was coming back under Ukrainian control after being occupied by Russian forces since March.The news broke after Russia said its troops had finished retreating from the western bank of the Dnipro river which divides Ukraine’s southern Kherson region in half.Russia’s defence ministry said the withdrawal was completed at 5am on Friday and no military equipment was left behind.The pullback, which comes two months after Russian forces withdrew from eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, represents another huge setback for Moscow in invasion launched in February.Yuri Sak, a senior advisor to the defence ministry called it an ‘important movement for our morale and our fight for our country’.Speaking to The Independent he said the counteroffensive in the south had been ‘well planned’ and based on ‘careful reconnaissance and intelligence’ but the fight had not ended.’This is far from over, there are still tens of thousands of Russians in the southern regions.’