ghostly emptiness in eastern Ukraine town of Lyman

The ghostly emptiness of Lyman streets in eastern Ukraine belies the strategic significance of the city.

There are no signs of Russian troops at all on Sunday. Few damaged Russian tanks, Russian dead or Russian prisoners. Members of the Ukrainian National Guard from the Dnipro 1 unit hover in small numbers on some streets.

The occasional rattle of gunfire or thud of artillery pierces the silence. A few locals emerge, riding bicycles, searching for food, bewildered about what is happening.

One day I wear a cap, another day a different cap, said one woman in tears, pretending to take off a hat.

She said that how can we live like this and change the control of the town.

CNN was one of the first media outlets to enter the newly liberated city, arriving 30 minutes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared the town completely cleared of Russian troops.

Ukrainian officials and troops had spoken of large numbers of Moscow's better units being trapped there. There were few signs of encirclement to be seen on Sunday.

Russian corpses had already been cleared and prisoners were being removed, according to some officials. Locals offered another explanation: Russian forces left the city on Friday in an orderly fashion.

Tanya said they got on their tanks, and drove out, riding her bicycle back to the bomb shelter, where she still spends the nights with 15 others.

A Ukrainian army spokesman, asked to respond to CNN's reporting, denied there had been a Russian withdrawal two days ago, saying there had been fighting in the area as recently as Saturday.

Sergiy Cherevatiy, a member of the Eastern Group of Armed Forces of Ukraine, said Russian troops had formed convoys to break through the de facto encirclement of the city. He said that some succeeded in getting out, while others had been hit.

The possibility that Russian forces may have conducted an orderly withdrawal on Friday raises an important question of timing for the Kremlin. During that day Russian President Vladimir Putin was signing documents falsely claiming to annex Lyman and other parts of eastern and southern Ukraine and holding a rally in Moscow's Red Square, claiming victory would be Russia s.

At the same time, it appears that his military were pulling out of Lyman, in one of the most significant Russian defeats for weeks a withdrawal that could have a knock-on effect on Russian control of occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The switch back to Ukrainian control in Lyman was swift, with one local already painting the Ukrainian gold and blue colors back on the gate of the local police station. The damage had already been swept away and rooms were tidied inside the building.

Roman sat on a table near a flag of the United Russia party in the local administration building. Bad, he said, describing the months of Russian control. He added that the administration building was used to manage locals and corral them into participating in the recent referendum, which in Lyman must have occurred under the full barrage of Ukraine's advance.

The Lyman s significant railway infrastructure has been damaged, the roofs have been blown off the station building and the rolling stock on the railways damaged. Multiple buildings in the town have been heavily destroyed on Sunday, yet the streets seemed to have been swept clean in some areas.

Many of the Ukrainian troops had already moved on towards the next target in Russia's rapidly faltering lines of defense Kremmina, further east.