Ukrainian official describes chaotic Russian withdrawal from strategic city

BLAHODATNE, Ukraine/KYIV: Russia announced the completion of its withdrawal from the strategic city of Kherson in southern Ukraine on Friday and a regional official said Ukrainian partisans had raised a flag there, but that many Russian troops had been unable to leave.Reuters could not immediately verify the full extent of Ukraine’s advance, the status of Russia’s retreat or the fate of any Russian soldiers who may have been left behind as Moscow rushed to pull its troops across the wide Dnipro River.Serhiy Khlan, a member of Ukraine’s regional council for Kherson, said a large number of Russian soldiers had drowned trying to escape Kherson, while others had changed into civilian clothes and were trying to hide.The city was almost under the control of Ukrainian forces, he said. He advised residents not to leave their homes while searches for remaining Russian troops took place.Earlier, the Russian defense ministry said it had finished pulling its troops from the western bank of the Dnipro river, where Kherson lies, just two days after Moscow announced the retreat.”Not a single unit of military equipment or weapons have been left on the right (western) bank. All Russian servicemen crossed to the left bank,” it added, saying that Russia had not suffered any loss of personnel or equipment during the withdrawal.Pro-Russian war bloggers had reported late on Thursday that Russian forces crossing the river were coming under heavy fire from Ukrainian forces. The Russian ministry said Ukrainian forces had struck Dnipro River crossings five times overnight with US-supplied HIMARS rocket systems.Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov had told Reuters on Thursday it would take at least a week for Russia to pull out of Kherson. He estimated Russia still had 40,000 troops in the region, and said intelligence showed its forces remained in and around the city.President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an overnight address that Ukrainian forces had recaptured 41 settlements as they advanced through the south, indicating one of the swiftest and most dramatic shifts of control in almost nine months of war.There was no sign of Russian forces when Reuters reached Blahodatne, 20 km (12 miles) north of Kherson.Villagers said about 100 Russians had held the village for eight months and throughout the occupation broke into vacant homes and looted them, removing furniture, televisions, stoves and refrigerators.They had killed a man who approached too close to their trenches and taken away two other men and a young woman whose fate remains unknown. The Russians withdrew in trucks without a fight on Wednesday night and Ukrainian troops moved in on Thursday, the villagers said.It is the third major Russian retreat of the war, and the first to involve abandoning such a large occupied city. Moscow’s forces were driven in March from the outskirts of the capital Kyiv and ousted from the northeastern region of Kharkiv in September.Kherson province is one of four that Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to have annexed from Ukraine in late September. The loss of the regional capital would appear to end dreams expressed by some Russians of seizing Ukraine’s entire Black Sea coast, although Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the region’s annexed status remained unchanged.