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Ukrainian troops pressed forward in the south Thursday after Russia ordered one of the war’s biggest retreats — but Kyiv warned that fleeing enemy troops could still turn Kherson into a “city of death.”
A small company of Ukrainian soldiers was shown on state TV being greeted by overjoyed residents in the center of the village of Snihurivka around 35 miles north of Kherson city, with a Ukrainian flag flying above the square behind them.
“Today, on Nov. 10, 2022, Snihurivka was liberated by the forces of the 131st Separate Intelligence Battalion. Glory to Ukraine!” a commander declared as dozens of locals applauded, cheered and filmed the soldiers on their phones.
Moscow ordered its troops Wednesday to retreat from the entire Russian-held pocket on the west bank of the Dnipro River, including Kherson city, after a top general reported that the loss of supply routes had made defense “futile.”
Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, have been tight-lipped in public, fearing a possible ambush and warning that Russians may still be planning to sow destruction on their way out.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the president, said Thursday that Russia wanted to turn Kherson into a “city of death,” mining everything from apartments to sewers and planning to shell the city from the other side of the river.
“This is what ‘Russian world’ looks like: came, robbed, celebrated, killed ‘witnesses’, left ruins and left,” he wrote on Twitter.
