for days now, ukrainian soldiers on the kherson perimeter have been dismissing reports that the russians were going to pull back. when we visited a mobile unit on the flatlands between kherson and mykolaiv the closest ukrainian controlled city the soldiers said they would not believe the russians were leaving until they could see them go. they took us on a mission to attack russian positions. they guide their soviet era artillery with a commercially available drone made in china. their command car is a 15 year old bmw imported from britain. it might have been a veteran of the school run now it s on bomb runs, passing on positions from the drone to adjust the gunners aim. the ukrainians claimed direct hits on positions in the large pocket of land russians control
berliners from both. east and west linked hands and danced around their liberated territory. i and, with nobody to stop them, it wasn t long before the first i attempts were made to destroy the structure itself. yasser arafat, who dominated the palestinian cause for so long, has died. palestinian authority has declared a state of mourning. after 17 years of discussion, the result was greeted with an outburst ofjoy. women ministers, who have long felt only grudgingly accepted amongst the clergy, suddenly felt welcome. this is newsday on the bbc. i m karishma vaswani in singapore. our headlines. russia is retreating its military forces from the city of kherson following a sustained counter attack by ukrainian forces trying to recapture it.
unit on the flatlands between kherson and mykolaiv the closest ukrainian controlled city the soldiers said they would not believe the russians were leaving until they could see them go. they took us on a mission to attack russian positions. they guide their soviet era artillery with a commercially available drone made in china. their command car is a 15 year old bmw imported from britain. it might have been a veteran of the school run now it s on bomb runs, passing on positions from the drone to adjust the gunners aim. the ukrainians claimed direct hits on positions in the large
we want to go back to russia. some ukrainians under occupation in kherson say they have seen changes in the city, as rumours circulated this week that the russians might pull back. translation: for two weeks or| more, kherson has been blocked. there is no crossing from the left bank to the right for civilians. as a result, the food and medicine is not delivered. if this continues for a long time, i don t know what people will eat and how they will receive basic medicine. a few video snapshots of life now in kherson have been posted. it is a city where russian roubles circulate alongside ukraine s currency, and the clocks now run on moscow time. the ukrainian soldiers we met on the front line facing
and hot springs of a spa. it s eight in the morning in singapore, and 3am in moscow where just weeks after president putin announced he was annexing kherson and said that it would be forever russian, moscow has said it s pulling its troops out of the ukrainian city. kherson is the only provincial capital russia has managed to capture since the start of its invasion. but over the past weeks ukraine has been conducting a counter offensive to push the occupiers out of the area. the commander of russian forces in ukraine called the pullout a difficult decision. the bbc s international editor jeremy bowen is in the region and sent this report