hello and welcome if you re watching in the uk or around the world. the russian ministry of defence says its troops have left the strategic town of lyman, in eastern ukraine. a ministry spokesman was quoted by russian news agencies as saying the withdrawal was carried out because of a threat of encirclement. earlier, the ukrainian military said its troops were inside the town. lyman was a key strategic target, used by russia as a major logistics hub, and sits in the donetsk region which the government in moscow has just declared to be a part of russia. video footage shared online shows ukrainian soldiers waving their national flag on the outskirts of lyman. we cannot however verify exactly where the flag raising is taking place. this report is from our ukraine correspondent james waterhouse. ukraine s counteroffensives have slowed, but for ukrainians, progress is still progress. traces of occupation are being removed, and quickly. lyman was a logistics hub for russia s invasi
hurricane ian. 76 people were killed, after the storm tore through the state, governor ron desantis says more than 1,600 rescues have been made since the storm struck. this left some communities unrecognizable. littered with wrecked homes as well as boats, as as you saw there. more than 628,000 customers are still without power and the destruction may just be coming to light. governor ron desantis is defending officials in lee county where half of the storm related deaths have been ann announced. they re facing criticism for issuing evacuation orders a day later than the neighboring county. here s what nadia romero was told. is that one of the things you ll be reviewing once we get out of the i can t aftermath. lee county should have had the evacuation order sooner from what we reviewed? the issue is they informed people and most people did not want to do it. that s the reality. you re in a situation, are you going to grab somebody out of their home that doesn t want to
Ukraine reports rapid pushback of Russian troops on two fronts timesofearth.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from timesofearth.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
lyman hours after russia illegally claimed it as part of its sham referendum. nick paton walsh and his team were on the ground moments after the ukrainian president con confirmed russia had moved out. give us the latest. reporter: we re the first television crew into lyman to see the devastation caused by this and see how ghostly empty it was and hear from locals the possibility that some russian troops managed an orderly withdrawal at roughly the same time that vladimir putin was standing on a stage rallying people towards victory, signing pieces of paper forcing lyman to be part of russian territory. perhaps why this is such a strategic defeat for russia. here s what we saw. it may not look like much but this is where putin s defeat in donetsk began. a prize from the last century
perhaps but trains and tracks are still how russia wages war today. lyman, what s left of it, now freed of russian russia. this is what it was about, the railway hub now in ukrainian hands and devastated by the fighting. and this was such a seminal part of russia s occupation of donetsk and luhansk the concern for moscow is the effect this has on the forces all the way to the russian border. on the town s edges we saw no sign of hundreds of russian prisoners or dead that had been expected to follow moscow s strategic defeat here. nor inside it. perhaps they have already been taken away. only silence instead. bicycles on the street. several residents told us the russians left in large numbers on friday. translator: they left in the night and day people said.