In late September Vladimir Putin held a big ceremony in the Kremlin.

Compass, you could say grand if you're being kind, ceremony in a kind of gold-painted reception room

watched by the most important people in this government.

The foreign minister was there, the head of the spy agencies.

And Putin basically says that his own is now, it's a Russian city, it's Russia's forever.

But anyway, if you go forward forever, it turns out to be six weeks.

Tonight, Euphoria in Hadson, a major Ukrainian city, now free from Russian rule.

Ukrainians hugging and kissing their soldiers, treating them as heroes, autographing flags.

On today's plane, how Ukrainian troops pulled off a decisive win in Hersan and humiliated Vladimir Putin.

A rare moment of good news in a war which has caused so much pain.

We love Ukraine!

It's today explained, I'm Noel King and you are?

My name is Luke Harding, I'm a journalist and foreign correspondent with a Guardian newspaper and a writer of books.

Describe Luke if you would where Hersan is and what makes it significant in this war.

Hersan is a port and a city and the south of Ukraine on the Nipra River,

which is a massive river with many tributaries that runs across the country,

basically dividing Ukraine into two halves, east and west.

It's a Russian-speaking city, so people are a native Russian speakers.

It has a population or had a population of about 300,000 people, perhaps a little shy of that,

maybe 280,000 before Vladimir Putin's invasion in February of this year.

Its significance is it was the first and the only major regional administrative capital which the Russians occupied.

It was a jewel, it was a kind of prize and it was a place that they captured very early on in the first days of invasion.

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