KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian soldiers arrive as heroes, greeted with kisses and songs. In the city of Kherson, which has endured months of Russian occupation, people poured into the streets on Friday. They raised the Ukrainian flag and danced in joy around a blazing campfire.
Their excitement, captured on videos they send out to the world, does not erase the significant problems that a brutal war has caused. Despite Russia’s withdrawal, there is still uncertainty about the future, worries about further attacks and concerns about shortages of food, fuel and electricity.
And it is scary that the full human cost of 9 months of Russian rule will soon become apparent.
But above all in Kherson, a provincial capital once one of Russia’s greatest war rewards, there is an unbridled glee and a fragile sense of relief. It was a feeling that reverberated across the country.
“Kherson is Ukrainian!” A man filmed shouting was standing outside Kherson regional government headquarters on Friday afternoon as Ukrainian soldiers cautiously entered the city. Ukrainian residents said that wherever people see Ukrainian soldiers, they are harassed by crowds who want to touch them, kiss them, shake their hands.
In phone interviews and text messages, residents said the emotional moment came back March 13, 1944 – the day the city was liberated from the Nazis. But the newfound sense of freedom is also offset by uncertainty and fear.
The Ukrainian people and military are worried that Russian soldiers in plain clothes may be hiding in the houses scattered around the city.
But people still took to the streets on Fridays. A video shows several people climbing a ladder to reach a billboard showing a young girl holding a Russian flag, alongside the words “Russia is here forever!”
Ukrainian soldiers entering a village outside the city were greeted by a young girl play the national anthem on the violin, rubble and devastation all around her, a video shows.
Several Ukrainians on Friday said they were shocked by what was happening around them. Yuriy Antoshchuk, a resident of Kherson, who has just left the city, said: “It’s hard to believe this. “From the inside, I am incredibly proud of all the people of Kherson who have suffered through this,” he said. That is only in line with “immeasurable, boundless gratitude to the armed forces, to whom I always bow my head.”
To mark Russia’s withdrawal, Ukraine’s postal service has issued a new stamp featuring the prized product of the country’s agricultural heartland: watermelons.
“Kherson is Ukrainian!” the words on the statement stamp. All government agencies have changed their official logos to include the image of a watermelon.
The feeling of joy followed a period of intense suffering in the Kherson region, where the Russian authorities sought to Russify an unruly section of the local population. Moscow introduced the Russian currency, forced teachers to adopt the “Russian curriculum” and brought in Russian businesses. It also imposes curfews and warns that those who violate them could be shot.
Moscow held a referendum in early September, when some residents were forced to vote by gun. Last month, President Vladimir V. Putin signed papers formalizing the illegal annexation of territory.
A month later, one of the two proxies appointed by the Kremlin to run the civilian government died, killed earlier this week in a car crash. The other has disappeared from public view, having fled to his new headquarters in Russian-controlled territory.
In recent weeks, Kherson has been looted, power has been cut, and internet connections have been cut off. But on Friday, people figured out how to charge their cell phones to capture video of the moment, share the celebration with journalists on social media channels and with government officials.
Mr. Antoshchuk, like people across the country, finds it difficult to focus on anything else and is glued to his phone to see the latest updates flooding Telegram and other social media channels. “Today, he said, “only sincere feelings of joy and gratitude.”
But, like everyone else interviewed, he doesn’t know what tomorrow – or even tonight – will bring.
The depth of Kherson’s suffering remains unfocused. For months, residents have recounted stories of friends being kidnapped, children being illegally deported, and loved ones being tortured and killed. They present the same bleak scene that has become the hallmark of the Russian occupation and is well documented by international journalists, human rights groups and Ukrainian investigators.
Even as they warned of difficult days to come in their bid to drive Russia out of Ukraine entirely, officials in Kyiv celebrated the moment, noting that many military analysts assumed the day This will never come.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to the Ukrainian president, said: “In February, the Ukrainian army was given ‘three days’. “So far, we have defended Kyiv, liberated three areas, liberated Kharkiv Oblast and approached Kherson. If these nine months have taught anything, it’s not fearing the ‘Russian bear’, not running away from a war, taking a beating and believing in Ukraine.”
The campaign to drive the Russians out of Kherson went on for several months. But the end came quickly. Throughout the night in Kherson, residents witnessed convoys of Russian soldiers racing to escape. Explosions rocked the city and people huddled in their homes. Then all fell into silence. By afternoon, it was clear that the Russians had disappeared.
Residents who had hidden Ukrainian flags pulled them out and slowly headed to the city center to wait for the arrival of Ukrainian troops.
As those armies began to arrive in the city, the celebrations increased. People parade through the streets with blue and yellow banners.
As night fell, Kherson residents lit fires and sang an ancient Cossack folk song, “Red Kalyna,” which was banned under Russian-occupied Kherson and refers to a Ukrainian berry.
“In the meadow, there, a red kalyna crouched low. For some reason, our glorious Ukraine has to worry like that,” they sang. “And we’ll take that red kalyna and we’ll raise it!”
