<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;"><b>Ukrainians on Saturday celebrated Russia's retreat from Kherson, as Kyiv said it was working to de-mine the strategic southern city, record Russian crimes and restore power across the region.</b></span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">Kherson was one of four regions in Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to have annexed in September.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Weeks later, the Russian retreat from the city of Kherson has boosted Ukrainian resistance after nearly nine months of fighting and hardship.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">In the formerly occupied village of Pravdyne, outside Kherson, returning locals embraced their neighbours, with some unable to hold back tears.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Victory, finally!" said Svitlana Galak, who lost her eldest daughter in the war.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Thank god we've been liberated and everything will now fall into place," the 43-year-old told AFP.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We are Ukraine," added her husband, Viktor, 44.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Several disabled anti-tank mines and grenades could be seen in the settlement, which is home to a Polish Roman Catholic church, with a number of damaged buildings also visible.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speaking from Kherson city centre, Yaroslav Yanushevych, head of the regional state administration, said everything was being done to "return normal life" to the area.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">While de-mining is carried out, a curfew has been put in place and movement in and out of the city has been limited, Yanushevych explained in a video posted to social media, in which people could be seen celebrating in the background.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Images distributed by the Ukrainian military showed Kherson residents dancing around a bonfire singing "Chervona Kalyna", a patriotic song.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Today, we all feel elation," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday after declaring the day before that the Black Sea city was back in Kyiv's hands.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><b>- Evacuation orders -</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kherson city -- which serves as a gateway to the Black Sea -- was the first major urban hub to fall after Russia invaded in February.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Before fleeing Kherson, the occupiers destroyed all critical infrastructure -- communication, water supply, heat, electricity," Zelensky said, adding that nearly 2,000 explosives had been removed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He said that Ukraine's forces had established control over more than 60 settlements in the Kherson region.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After an eight-month Russian occupation, Ukrainian television resumed broadcasting in the city and the region's energy provider said it was working to restore power supplies.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ukraine's police chief Igor Klymenko said around 200 officers were erecting roadblocks and recording "crimes of the Russian occupiers".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He urged Kherson residents to watch out for possible landmines laid by the Russian troops, saying one policeman had been wounded while de-mining an administrative building.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A woman and two children were taken to hospital with injuries after an explosive device went off near their car in the village of Mylove, police said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Berislav district of the Kherson region, Ukrainian police said Russian shelling left "dead and wounded", without providing further details.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Across the Dnipro River in the east, local pro-Moscow authorities in Kakhovka district issued an evacuation order to its employees to head to the Russian region of Krasnodar.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Today, the administration is the number one terrorist attack target for Ukraine's Armed Forces," according to a post on an official Telegram channel.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"This is why by order of the Kherson region government... we are moving to a more secure territory, from where we will be governing the area," it said, referring to the Russia-installed body.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ukraine's Armed Forces said Saturday evening that Russian forces were currently "strengthening fortification equipment of the defensive lines on the left bank of the Dnipro".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kherson's full recapture would open a gateway for Ukraine to the entire Kherson region, with access to both the Black Sea in the west and the Sea of Azov in the east.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><b>- Nuclear hint -</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On Saturday, an increasingly isolated Putin spoke by phone with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, pledging to intensify political and trade cooperation, the Kremlin said.</div><div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Russia's former president Dmitry Medvedev hinted again that Moscow could use nuclear weapons.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"For reasons that are obvious to all reasonable people, Russia has not yet used its entire arsenal of possible means of destruction," Medvedev said on messaging app Telegram.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"There is a time for everything."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Blinken hailed the "remarkable courage" of Ukraine's military and people and vowed US support "will continue for as long as it takes" to defeat Russia.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In London, British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said Russia's "strategic failure" in Kherson could prompt ordinary Russians to question the war.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Ordinary people of Russia must surely ask themselves: 'What was it all for?'"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Despite the Kherson victory, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned that Russia is still "mobilising more conscripts and bringing more weapons to Ukraine" and called for the Western world's continued support.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Kremlin has insisted that Kherson remains part of Russia.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"This is a subject of the Russian Federation. There are no changes in this and there cannot be changes," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A Ukrainian recapture of the whole Kherson region would disrupt a land bridge for Russia between its mainland and the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014. AFP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>