KYIV, Nov 10 – The Ukrainian army said it had made major gains over the last day around Kherson after Russia said it began withdrawing troops from the strategic Ukrainian city.

The developments around Kherson create a potential turning point in the grinding war that is likely to lead to the liberation of the only provincial capital that Russia has captured in early days of the invasion.

Ukrainian troops say they have taken back the key town of Snihurivka, 50km (30 miles) to the north of Kherson. Kyiv has also claimed big pushes on two fronts near Kherson, including advances of 7km in some places.

The armed forces commander-in-chief, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny, said Kyiv’s forces have advanced 36.5 kilometers and retaken 41 villages and towns since Oct. 1 in the province, which the Kremlin has illegally annexed. That included 12 settlements on Wednesday alone, The Associated Press reported.

Ukrainian forces seem to be scoring more battlefield successes elsewhere in the Kherson region and closing in on the city. President Volodymyr Zelenskky said Thursday night the pace has increased so much that residents “are now checking almost every hour where our units have reached and where else our national flag was raised.”

A forced pullout from Kherson would mark one of Russia’s worst war setbacks. Recapturing the city, whose pre-war population was 280,000, 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.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Russian troops laid mines throughout Kherson as they withdrew to turn it into a “city of death” and predicted they would shell it after relocating across the Dnieper River.

From these new positions, the Kremlin could try to escalate the 8 1/2-month war, which U.S. assessments showed may already have killed or wounded tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

Arkadiy Dovzhenko, who fled Kherson in June, said his grandparents still living there told him Thursday that “the Russians were bringing a lot of equipment into the town and also mining every inch of it.”

Zelensky said Thursday night his forces were racing to remove land mines from 170,000 square meters (65,637 square miles) nationwide, and planned also to do so in Kherson. A spokeswoman for Ukraine’s southern military, Natalia Humeniuk, said on Ukrainian television that resistance forces working behind enemy lines “carefully collect information” about critical infrastructure threatened by mines.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu ordered a troop withdrawal from Kherson and nearby areas on Wednesday after his top general in Ukraine reported that a loss of supply routes during Ukraine’s southern counteroffensive made a defense “futile.” (ap/ez)