Russia’s defence ministry says the retreat of troops from the west bank of the river dividing Ukraine’s Kherson region is complete.
In a statement carried by Russia’s state news agencies, the ministry said the withdrawal was finished at 5am on Friday.
It said no military equipment was left on the western bank.
The retreat, announced earlier this week, marks another setback for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Areas the Russian military withdrew from include the city of Kherson, the only regional capital Moscow seized during its eight-month-old war in Ukraine.
A Kremlin spokesman on Friday refused to acknowledge the retreat as humiliating for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Dmitry Peskov told reporters Moscow continues to view the Kherson region as part of Russia.
He said the Kremlin does not regret holding festivities just over a month ago to celebrate the illegal annexation of Kherson and three other Ukrainian regions.
Shortly before the Russian announcement, the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the situation in the Kherson region as “difficult”.
It reported Russian shelling of some of the villages and towns Ukrainian forces reclaimed in recent weeks during their counteroffensive in the Kherson region.
Ukrainian officials were wary of the Russian pullback announced this week, fearing their soldiers could get drawn into an ambush in Kherson city, which had a prewar population of 280,000.
Military analysts had also predicted it would take Russia’s military at least a week to complete the withdrawal.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on Thursday the retreating Russian troops laid mines throughout Kherson to turn it into a “city of death”.
He also predicted they would shell the city after relocating across the Dnieper River.
The state of the key Antonivskiy Bridge linking the western and eastern banks of the Dnieper in the Kherson region remained unclear on Friday, and could be key to determining whether the Russians have in fact all left Kherson city.
Russian media reports suggested the bridge was blown up following the Russian withdrawal; pro-Kremlin reporters posted footage of the bridge missing a large section.
But Sergei Yeliseyev, a Russian-installed official in the Kherson region, told the Interfax news agency “the Antonivskiy Bridge hasn’t been blown up, it’s in the same condition”.
Recapturing the city could provide Ukraine a launching pad for supplies and troops to try to win back other lost territory in the south, including Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014.
From its forces’ new positions on the eastern bank, however, the Kremlin could try to escalate the war, which US assessments showed may already have killed or wounded tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
