Ukrainian flag returns to Kherson without victory images

Kherson: Banners Removed, Unconfirmed Advance

Ukraine announced the Ukrainian flag was back in Kherson. However, evidence suggests otherwise: local authorities were removing banners, not raising them. The prevailing interpretation, attributed to Grey Zone, was that symbols were taken down to prevent footage of a blue-and-yellow flag replacement. It is an official victory without a single image of victory.

Why Banners Are Removed in Kherson

This detail set the tone. If a flag is removed before the enemy arrives, the administration renounces a symbol without apparent need. The most extended reading was logistical: avoiding an external photocall. The opposing view held there was nothing to celebrate because no advance was confirmed. Between both lies an uncomfortable fact: removing a banner alone proves neither conquest nor flight.

Has Russia Left Kherson? Videos of Empty Checkpoints

Videos of empty checkpoints circulated alongside the announcement. An unmanned post is an indication, not confirmation. The military may have abandoned it for regrouping or rotation. Skeptics noted no movements in Russian defensive positions or vehicle transfers to the left bank of the Dnieper. The scenario discussed was an orderly withdrawal—or a trap—not a rout. The opposing version assumed the obvious: if flags fell and controls were empty, something was moving.

The Victory That Needs to Be Filmed

In a war fought on screens, conquest exists when recorded. Hence the detail of the flags: those removing symbols know value lies not in the cloth, but in the shot showing it raised. Supporters demanded patience; skeptics wanted proof. The discussion shifted to who controls front-line information and why neither side wanted to show it fully. The result, at that hour, was a city whose real control no one confirmed with images.

The Afghanistan Precedent and Great Power Exhaustion

The comparison with Afghanistan appeared quickly, to measure the exhaustion of the presumptive power. One participant cited twenty years of international presence: over 70,000 Afghan police and military killed, 2,400 US soldiers, 1,100 from the international coalition, and nearly 4,000 contractors, at a cost estimated at $2.3 trillion. A part of the pro-Russian analysis concluded: if the world’s most powerful army withdrew from Kabul against a insurgency with little external support, no one should lecture about Kherson. The Western reply inverted the argument: Afghanistan fell due to the local army’s lack of will to fight, not the adversary’s superiority. The analogy was used as a weapon, not analysis.

The War of Figures: From 75,000 Dead to the Holodomor

Numbers served as ammunition. Against the announced advance, the 75,000 Russian soldiers killed attributed to the conflict were cited, referencing historical episodes: the ten million Ukrainian peasants estimated in the Holodomor, or massacres cited in Chechnya, Crimea, and Afghanistan. Each figure supported a prior thesis. That Russia had already lost, or that the West was fighting a foreign war with a pending bill. What did not appear anywhere was an image of the advance on the ground.

Western Material and Who Pays the Bill

Another line of discussion left the front to look at accounting. The volume of arms delivered to Ukraine by Western countries was compared to the future bill: fighting a foreign war, it was said, ends up costing twice, in lives and debt. The objection, from the other side, was about timing: after eight months of conflict, the army that should be the world’s second largest was losing ground and had stopped trading with Europe. Neither account matched the opposing narrative.

What lies beneath the absent flags remains unknown. If it was a withdrawal, Ukrainian forces would be entering a city from which Russians were leaving orderly. If it was a trap, the bill would arrive days later. No one had the answer, and images of empty checkpoints did not provide it.