Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Although Russia has only tactically retreated a part of its armed forces from Kherson it occupied months ago, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a surprise visit to the ‘liberated’ area, on Monday exuded confidence that it’s the “beginning of the end of the war.”
According to reports, Russia pulled back only 30 percent of its troops from the Kherson area on Friday last. The Ukrainians cautiously celebrated this event and unfurled their national flag in the ‘liberated” areas.
Reacting to the Russian retreat, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned Ukraine might face difficult months ahead and said that Russia’s military capability should not be underestimated.
“Putin’s aim is to leave Ukraine cold and dark this winter,” he told a press conference in The Hague.
The Ukrainian officials distributed images of President Zelensky singing the national anthem with his hand over his chest as the country’s blue and yellow flag was hoisted next to Kherson’s main administrative building.
“It is a long way, a difficult way because the war took the best heroes of our country. We are ready for peace but our peace, for our country it’s all our country, all our territory,” an emotional Zelensky said.
Russian President Putin’s spokesperson denied that the Ukrainian leader’s visit impacted the status of the Kherson region, which Moscow formally annexed last month.
In Kherson, Zelensky said that “the price of this war is high.”
That Russia had only tactically retreated from a part of Kherson became clear as Ukraine’s national energy company said Moscow’s forces destroyed a key energy facility before retreating from the western bank of the Dnipro river. The US also said the Russian forces caused “significant damage to civilian infrastructure,” including “water and utility systems”, prior to their departure.
The city of Kherson was the first major urban hub to fall to Russian forces and the only regional capital seized by Moscow’s troops.
Its recapture opens a gateway for Ukraine to the entire Kherson region, one of four that the Kremlin announced in September were annexed as part of Russia.
A senior US military official said it is possible Moscow still has a “small number” of troops on the western side of the Dnipro.
Elsewhere, Ukraine’s forces had retaken 12 towns and villages in the eastern region of Lugansk, the military and local officials said Monday.
In Indonesia, US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, a key ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, agreed in their talks on Monday that nuclear weapons should never be used, including in Ukraine.