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Ukrainian officials stopped short of confirming they had recaptured Izium, but Andriy Yermak, Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, posted a photo of troops on its outskirts and tweeted an emoji of grapes. Ukraine’s armed forces have liberated around 2,000 square kilometers (770 square miles) of territory since a counter-offensive against Russia started earlier this month, he said. “The Russian army these days is demonstrating its best ability – to show its back,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address Saturday evening. The Russian withdrawal was heralded by Ukrainian leaders. Witnesses described traffic jams of cars with people leaving Russian-held territory. The head of Russia’s administration in Kharkiv told residents to evacuate the province and flee to Russia to “save lives,” TASS reported.

The state-run TASS news agency quoted Russia’s defense ministry as saying it had ordered troops to leave the vicinity and reinforce operations elsewhere in neighboring Donetsk. Russian forces used Izium as the logistics base for one of their main campaigns – a months-long assault from the north on the adjacent Donbas region comprised of Donetsk and Luhansk. This could prove a decisive turning point in the 6-month-old war, with thousands of Russian soldiers abandoning ammunition stockpiles and equipment as they fled.

The swift fall of Izium in Kharkiv province was Moscow’s worst defeat since its troops were forced back from the capital Kyiv in March. Moscow abandoned its main bastion in northeastern Ukraine on Saturday, in a sudden collapse of one of the war’s main front lines after Ukrainian forces made a rapid advance.