Russia's withdrawal from Kherson marks the third major retreat in the war.

Ukraine's defence ministry said it had recaptured 179 settlements along the Dnipro River since the beginning of this week.

Left behind in the sometimes hurried retreat of Russian soldiers are mountains of gear, weapons, mortars and mines.

While residents celebrate and rejoice in the liberation of their homes, they have to remain cautious.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in one of his nightly video addresses said "the Russian army left behind the same savagery it did in other regions of the country it entered".

Mr Zelenskyy also warned the residents of Kherson about the presence of Russian mines.

"I am asking you please not to forget that the situation in Kherson region remains very dangerous," he said. 

In Kherson's village of Blahodatne, Russians left under cover of darkness, leaving only a handful of residents after eight months of occupation.

Serhii Kalko, another of roughly 60 people who stayed in Blahodatne out of a pre-war population of 1,000, was struck by how quiet the final retreat had been. 

"They left silently. They didn't even speak with each other," the 43-year-old said. 

Nova Husarivka, a town with less than 1,000 residents in the Kharkiv region, was liberated in September. 

When 55-year-old Olena Kushnir was allowed to walk freely into her property for the first time since Russian forces took it over, she found an unexploded shell lying in her tomato fields.

Recaptured sites like the city of Izium, south of Kupiansk, sustained an enormous amount of destruction during the war.

"We lived through this [for] six months. We sat it out in cellars. We went through everything it is possible to go through. We absolutely cannot say we feel safe," Liubov Sinna, 74, told Reuters in the days following the region's liberation.