YUZHNE, UKRAINE (AP) – Ukrainian media are reporting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has visited the newly liberated southern city of Kherson.
The presidential office said it could not immediately confirm that Zelenskyy had travelled to Kherson and he himself had said on Sunday on Facebook that he was in his office in Kyiv, the capital.
But he was photographed yesterday posing with troops in a central Kherson square.
Zelenskyy is accusing Russian forces of having committed “the same atrocities as in other regions of our country” before they were forced to pull out from the strategic city of Kherson and its surrounds.
In his nightly video address on Sunday, Zelenskyy said without details that “investigators have already documented more than 400 Russian war crimes, and the bodies of both civilians and military personnel have been found”.
“In the Kherson region, the Russian army left behind the same atrocities as in other regions of our country,” he said. “We will find and bring to justice every murderer. Without a doubt.”
The end of Russia’s eight-month occupation of Kherson city has sparked days of celebration but also exposed a humanitarian emergency, with residents living without power and water and short of food and medicines. Russia still controls about 70 per cent of the wider Kherson region.
Zelenskyy said Russian soldiers who were left behind when their commanders abandoned the city last week are being detained. Ukrainian police have called on residents to help identify people who collaborated with Russian forces.
Zelenskyy urged people in the liberated zone to also be alert for booby traps, saying: “Please, do not forget that the situation in the Kherson region is still very dangerous.”