IZIUM, Ukraine (AP) — His hand on his heart, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy watched as his country’s flag was hoisted Wednesday above the recently recaptured city of Izium, a rare foray outside the capital that highlighted Moscow’s embarrassing retreat in the face of a lightning Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Russian forces left the war-scarred city last week as Kyiv’s soldiers pressed a stunning advance that has reclaimed large swaths of territory in the country’s northeastern Kharkiv region.
As Zelenskyy looked on and sang the national anthem, the Ukrainian flag was raised in front of the burned-out city hall building in the largely devastated town, where apartment buildings are blackened by fire and pockmarked by artillery strikes. The center of one residential building had collapsed, a gaping hole and piles of rubble where homes used to be.
“The view is very shocking but it is not shocking for me,” Zelenskyy said in brief comments to the press, “because we began to see the same pictures from Bucha, from the first de-occupied territories … the same destroyed buildings, killed people.”
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On the northern outskirts of Izium, the remains of Russian tanks and vehicles lay shattered along the road.
Zelenskyy said that as Ukrainian soldiers retook villages, “the life comes back.”
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