The ghostly emptiness of the streets of Lyman, in eastern Ukraine, belies the strategic importance of this city.
There are no signs of Russian troops – few damaged Russian tanks, Russian dead or Russian prisoners. Members of the Ukrainian National Guard of the Dnipro-1 unit hover in small numbers in some streets.
The occasional sound of gunfire, or the thud of artillery, pierces the silence. A few locals emerge, biking, looking for food, bewildered by what is happening.
“One day I’m wearing one cap, another day a different cap,” said a tearful woman, pretending to take off a hat.
“How can we live like this,” she said, referring to the change in control of the city.
CNN was probably the first news outlet to enter the recently liberated city, arriving thirty minutes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the city was completely cleared of Russian troops.
Ukrainian officials and troops had repeatedly spoken of the fact that many of Moscow’s best units were trapped there. Yet on Sunday there were few signs of encirclement.
Some officials said the Russian corpses had already been evacuated and the prisoners had been evacuated. But residents have offered another explanation: that Russian forces left the town on Friday in an orderly fashion.
“They got on their tanks and left,” Tanya said, cycling back to the air-raid shelter, where she is still spending the night with 15 other people.
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