Biden aide calls Russia's retreat from Kherson ‘Extraordinary Victory’ for Kyiv

Russia’s withdrawal from the Ukrainian city of Kherson is an “extraordinary victory” for Kyiv, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said, Report informs via Bloomberg.

Sullivan added, however, he had not yet verified Russia’s claims that it had pulled its forces from the west bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region, abandoning the only regional capital captured in its invasion of Ukraine.

“But it does look as though the Russians have executed this withdrawal,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One as President Joe Biden headed to a summit in Cambodia. “And it does look as though the Ukrainians have just won an extraordinary victory, where the one regional capital that Russia had seized in this war is now back under a Ukrainian flag.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared Kherson re-captured in a video address posted Friday on his Telegram channel. Kyiv’s forces have been hounding Russian troops in the city for months, with regular strikes on bridges across the Dnipro in order to interrupt their supplies.

Russia occupied the city in the first weeks of the war. But in recent months, momentum has turned sharply against Moscow’s forces as Ukrainian troops, equipped with advanced weaponry from the US and other NATO countries, recovered thousands of square kilometers of territory in the country’s northeast and south.

Sullivan dismissed pressure on Zelensky to show openness to peace talks with Moscow, saying that Ukraine is “the party of peace” in the conflict and Russia is “the party of war.” Russia could end the war by simply withdrawing from Ukraine, he said, whereas if Kyiv’s forces stop fighting, “it would be the end of Ukraine.”