Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy handed out awards to Ukrainian soldiers in the newly retaken city of Kherson on Monday.
He called the Russian withdrawal from Kherson “the beginning of the end of the war".
The retaking of Kherson was one of Ukraine's biggest successes in nearly nine months since the invasion.
It served another stinging blow to the Kremlin and could become a springboard for further advances into occupied territory.
Zelenskyy walked the streets of the city Monday, just hours after warning in his nightly video address of booby traps and mines left behind by the Russians before their retreat.
Kherson is one of the four regions that Russia claimed it had annexed.
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