"I didn't believe it at first. I thought it would take weeks or months, a few hundred metres at a time. And in just one day, they've made it into Kherson. It's the best surprise ever," said 41-year-old Artem Lukiv.
"I told my kids, 'That's it. We've been liberated,' and we all started crying," he said, hugging his two children and a Ukrainian flag at the same time.
Under the square's victory column commemorating Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Kherson's displaced residents belted out the national anthem in unison and wiped their tears.
Then they chanted the numbers of the first Ukrainian army brigades to enter Kherson -- the first major urban hub to fall to the Russians and the first to be taken back.
"We're really happy... Our soldiers are gods," Lukiv said.
"We've been waiting for this for nine months. Kherson belongs to Ukraine and it always will."
