Ukraine works to stabilize Kherson after Russia ends months-long occupation

Ukrainian police officers returned on Saturday, along with TV and radio services, to the southern city of Kherson following the withdrawal of Russian troops, part of fast but cautious efforts to make the only regional capital captured by Russia livable after months of occupation. Yet one official still described the city as "a humanitarian catastrophe."

People across Ukraine awoke from a night of jubilant celebrating after the Kremlin announced its troops had withdrawn to the other side of the Dnipro River from Kherson. The Ukrainian military said it was overseeing "stabilization measures" around the city to make sure it was safe.

The Russian retreat represented a significant setback for the Kremlin some six weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed the Kherson region and three other provinces in Ukraine's south and east, in breach of international law, and declared them Russian territory.

Ihor Klymenko, chief of the National Police of Ukraine, said Saturday on Facebook that some 200 officers were at work in the city, setting up checkpoints and documenting evidence of possible war crimes. Police teams were also working to identify and neutralize unexploded ordnance, and one sapper was injured on Saturday while demining an administrative building, Klymenko said.

Ukraine's communications watchdog said national television and radio broadcasts had resumed, and an adviser to Kherson's mayor said humanitarian aid and supplies had begun to arrive from the neighbouring Mykolaiv region.

But the adviser, Roman Holovnya, described the situation in Kherson as "a humanitarian catastrophe." He said the remaining residents lacked water, medicine and food — and key basics like bread went unbaked because of a lack of electricity.

"The occupiers and collaborators did everything possible so that those people who remained in the city suffered as much as possible over those days, weeks, months of waiting" for Ukraine's forces to arrive, Holovnya said. "Water supplies are practically non-existent."

Russian forces still nearby

The chairman of Khersonoblenergo, the region's pre-war power provider, said electricity was being returned "to every settlement in the Kherson region immediately after the liberation."

Despite the efforts to restore normal civilian life, Russian forces remain close by. The General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces said Saturday that the Russians were fortifying their battle lines on the river's eastern bank after abandoning the capital. About 70 per cent of the Kherson region remains under Russian control.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Saturday that Ukrainian forces have established control of more than 60 settlements in the Kherson region, and "stabilization measures are also ongoing in Kherson itself."

"Everywhere in the liberated territory, our explosives technicians have a lot of work to do. Almost 2,000 explosive items have already been removed," Zelenskyy said. "Before fleeing from Kherson, the occupiers destroyed all critical infrastructure — communication, water supply, heat, electricity."

Major setback for Moscow

Photos posted to social media on Saturday showed Ukrainian activists removing memorial plaques put up by the occupation authorities that were installed by the Kremlin to run the Kherson region. A post on the Telegram messaging service — on the channel of Yellow Ribbon, a self-described Ukrainian resistance movement — showed two people in a park taking down plaques picturing Soviet-era military figures.

Moscow's announcement that Russian forces were withdrawing across the Dnipro River, which divides both the Kherson region and Ukraine, followed a stepped-up Ukrainian counter-offensive in the country's south.

In the last two months, Ukraine's military said it had reclaimed dozens of towns and villages north of Kherson city, and the military said that's where the stabilization activities were taking place.

Russian state news agency TASS quoted an official in Kherson's Kremlin-appointed administration on Saturday as saying that Henichesk, a city on the Sea of Azov some 200 kilometres southeast of Kherson city, would serve as the region's "temporary capital" after the withdrawal across the Dnipro.

Ukrainian media derided the announcement, with daily newspaper Ukrainska Pravda saying Russia "had made up a new capital" for the region.

'The war continues'

Across much of Ukraine, moments of jubilation marked the exit of Russian forces, since a retreat from Kherson and other areas on the Dnipro River's west bank would appear to shatter Russian hopes to press an offensive west to Mykolaiv and Odesa to cut off Ukraine's access to the Black Sea.

In Odesa, the Black Sea port, residents draped themselves in Ukraine's blue-and-yellow flags, shared champagne and held up flag-coloured cards with the word "Kherson" on them.

But like Zelenskyy, Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba sought to temper the excitement.

"We are winning battles on the ground, but the war continues," he said from Cambodia, where he was attending a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Kuleba brought up the prospect of the Ukrainian army finding evidence of possible Russian war crimes in Kherson, just as it did after the Russian pullbacks in the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions.

"Every time we liberate a piece of our territory, when we enter a city liberated from Russian army, we find torture rooms and mass graves with civilians tortured and murdered by Russian army in the course of the occupation," Ukraine's top diplomat said.

"It's not easy to speak with people like this. But I said that every war ends with diplomacy, and Russia has to approach talks in good faith."

U.S. assessments this week showed Russia's war in Ukraine may have already killed or wounded tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

Elsewhere, Russia continued its grinding offensive in Ukraine's industrial east, targeting the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, the Ukrainian General Staff said.

Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko reported on Saturday that two civilians were killed and four wounded over the last day as battles heated up around Bakhmut and Avdiivka, a small city that has remained in Ukrainian hands throughout the war.

Russia's continued push to capture Bakhmut demonstrates the Kremlin's desire for visible gains following weeks of setbacks. It would also pave the way to move onto other Ukrainian strongholds in the heavily contested Donetsk region.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region west of Donetsk, Russia again shelled communities near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the Ukrainian regional governor said. Russia and Ukraine have long traded blame for shelling in and around the plant, Europe's largest.