IZIUM, Ukraine -- President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, standing in a cold drizzle amid wreckage left by the fleeing Russian army, looked to the sky Wednesday where the national flag had just been raised in the main square of the reclaimed city of Izium in northeastern Ukraine.

"Today, when we look up, we are looking for only one thing -- the flag of Ukraine," he said to soldiers assembled before him in front of the city's bombed-out municipal building. "Our blue and yellow flag is already flying in the deoccupied Izium. And it will be so in every Ukrainian city and village."

As he was returning from the front this morning, a passenger car collided with Zelenskyy's vehicle in a motorcade in Kyiv, but he wasn't seriously hurt, his spokesman said on Facebook. Spokesman Sergii Nikiforov said the driver of the other vehicle received first aid from Zelenskyy's medical team and was taken by ambulance. Medics examined the president, who suffered no serious injuries in the accident, Nikiforov wrote. He did not specify what injuries Zelenskyy, 44, might have suffered.

Zelenskyy's visit to a city that less than a week ago was under Russian control was a tangible sign of Russia's humiliating and chaotic retreat from the northeast. In recent days, Ukrainian forces have taken back an area that is home to 150,000 people in 300 towns and cities, where many residents described months of brutality under occupation.

It also underscored the steep challenges facing the Kremlin as it struggles to meet even its scaled-back ambition of seizing all of the eastern Donbas region.

Russian setbacks over the past week have been significant, with more than 100 tanks, dozens of armored fighting vehicles and vast amounts of military ammunition and equipment lost, according to the military analysis site Oryx.

Scores of Russian soldiers were taken prisoner as the Ukrainians advanced and some of Moscow's troops fled over the border back into Russia, according to the Pentagon.

Izium is just 9 miles from the front line, and Zelenskyy's visit showed his confidence in the nation's military to ensure his safety. During his address to the troops, an explosion echoed in the distance as soldiers blew up a Russian mine left on the deserted streets. There was destruction across the city, which for more than six months served as a base of operations for Russia's eastern campaign.

Only around 10,000 of the 40,000 people who once lived in Izium remain. One of the first things that Russian forces did when they took over towns across the northeast was to cut access to internet and cell service, leaving people without reliable information. Residents are now revealing details of the cruelty and confusion of the occupation.

Serhii Bolvinov, the head of the investigative department of the regional police force, said that Russian forces in one town had set up a "torture chamber" in the basement of the police precinct.

Residents in other towns and cities in the Kharkiv region have described how Russian forces would search for people who might have relatives in the military, or grab people off the street for no apparent reason.

Valeriy Marchenko, the mayor of Izium, said in an interview that one of the first orders of business would be to get basic infrastructure working again as winter approached.

"The pipelines got frozen and tore apart back in February," he said. "Since then nothing has been made to repair them. I doubt whether we would be able to restore the heating system before winter."

Prosecutors said they so far have found six bodies with traces of torture in recently retaken Kharkiv region villages. The head of the Kharkiv prosecutor's office, Oleksandr Filchakov, said bodies were found in Hrakove and Zaliznyche, villages around 35 miles southeast of Kharkiv city.

"We have a terrible picture of what the occupiers did. ... Such cities as Balakliia, Izium, are standing in the same row as Bucha, Borodyanka, Irpin," said Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin, listing places where the Ukrainians have alleged Russian forces committed atrocities.

Local authorities have made similar claims in other areas Russia previously held, but it was not immediately possible to verify their information. They have not yet provided evidence of potential atrocities on the scale described in Bucha, where the number and conditions of civilian casualties prompted international demands to press war crimes charges against Russian officials.

Moscow's recent rout in northeastern Ukraine was its largest military defeat since Russian troops withdrew from the Kyiv area months ago. On the northern outskirts of Izium, the remains of Russian tanks and vehicles lay shattered along a road.

As Zelenskyy visited, his forces pressed their counteroffensive, de-mined retaken ground and investigated possible war crimes. He said that "life comes back" as Ukrainian soldiers return to previously occupied villages.

The Ukrainian governor of the eastern Luhansk region, Serhiy Haidai, said Ukrainian soldiers were preparing to retake the area, which borders the Kharkiv region and has been mostly under Russian control since July. Intense shelling of Ukrainian forces continued, he said.

Haidai told The Associated Press that Ukrainian troops were flying Ukrainian flags in the cities of Svatove and Starobilsk.

But in Kreminna, another city where Ukrainians raised their flag, Russians returned Wednesday and "tore down the [Ukrainian] flags and are demonstrably showing that they're there," Haidai said.

A Russia-allied separatist military leader confirmed the Ukrainian advance on the Luhansk region. Andrei Marochko, a local militia officer, said on Russian TV that the situation was "really difficult."

"In some places, the contact line has come very close to the borders of the Luhansk People's Republic," Marochko said, referring to the independent state the separatists declared eight years ago.

The counteroffensive has left more weapons in Ukrainian hands.

Russian forces likely left behind dozens of tanks, armored personnel carriers and other heavy weaponry as they fled Ukraine's advance in the east, a Ukrainian think tank said Wednesday. The Center for Defense Strategies said one Russian unit fleeing the Izium area left behind more than three dozen T-80 tanks and about as many infantry fighting vehicles. Another unit left 47 tanks and 27 armored vehicles, it said.

The center said Russian forces tried to destroy some of the abandoned vehicles through artillery strikes as they fell back. Typically, armed forces ruin equipment left behind so their opponent can't use it.

However, the chaos of the Russian withdrawal apparently forced them to abandon untouched ammunition and weapons.

With the recent Ukrainian gains, a new front line has emerged along the Oskil River, which largely traces the Kharkiv region's eastern edge, a Washington-based think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, said Wednesday.

"Russian troops are unlikely to be strong enough to prevent further Ukrainian advances along the entire Oskil River because they do not appear to be receiving reinforcements, and Ukrainian troops will likely be able to exploit this weakness to resume the counteroffensive across the Oskil if they choose," the institute said.

In other areas, Russia continued its attacks, causing more casualties in a war that has dragged on for nearly seven months.

Two people were killed and three wounded after Russia attacked Mykolaiv with S-300 missiles overnight, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said.

The Nikopol area, across a river from the shutdown Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, was shelled three times during the night, with no injuries immediately reported, regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko said.

Fighting also raged in the eastern Donetsk region, where shelling killed five civilians and wounded 16. Together, Luhansk and Donetsk make up the Donbas, an industrial area that Moscow set out to capture after an unsuccessful attempt to invade Kyiv.

Russian troops are targeting critical infrastructure. Eight cruise missiles aimed at water equipment hit Zelenskyy's hometown of Kryvyi Rih, a city on the Inhulets River 93 miles southwest of Dnipro, the deputy head of the president's office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, reported on his Telegram channel. Zelenskyy said the strikes appeared to be an attempt to flood the city and that a dam on a reservoir was hit. Video posted online showed elevated water levels on the Inhulets and flooded city streets, and evacuations of residents were suggested.

U.S. President Joe Biden observed Wednesday that Ukrainian forces have made "significant progress" in recent days but added, "I think it's going to be a long haul."

While criticism of the invasion seems to be increasing in Russia, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said after a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, "Unfortunately, I cannot tell you that the realization has grown over there by now that this was a mistake to start this war."

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday that he had spoken with Putin about exporting Russian fertilizer through Ukraine's Black Sea ports to address a famine threat.

The U.N. chief said at a news conference in New York that high prices for fertilizer have reduced the planting of crops, making it critical to increase Russian exports of ammonia -- a key fertilizer ingredient -- by shipping it through Black Sea ports now used to transport grain from Ukraine.

Western military and economic support has allowed Ukraine to keep fighting since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, and the Ukrainian government received more assistance Wednesday.

An international group of creditors, including the U.S., finalized a deal to suspend Ukraine's debt service through the end of 2023, helping the country ease liquidity pressures and increase social, health and economic spending.

Information for this article was contributed by Andrew E. Kramer and Marc Santora of The New York Times and by Elena Becatoros, Hanna Arhirova and Jon Gambrell of The Associated Press.

 Gallery: Images from Ukraine, month 7

Print Headline: Zelenskyy sees flag fly over city that Russia fled

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