In the Ukrainian city of Izyum, the country’s blue and yellow flag has just been raised again over the charred town hall, months after Russian tanks entered.

Cheerful residents rush to a hilltop near a cellphone tower, the only place in town with a signal, to call relatives and tell them the good news: the Russians are out.

Ukrainian soldiers liberated the eastern city over the weekend as the army retook parts of the territory, part of its Blitz counteroffensive to repel Russian soldiers who invaded on February 24.

The sight of Ukrainian soldiers caused waves of emotions among some residents of Izyum.

“We received them with tears in our eyes. We’ve been waiting for her for months… we’re very happy,” 61-year-old Nadiya Nesolena told AFP.

Izyum in the Kharkiv region, with a pre-war population of 50,000, had been entirely occupied by Russian troops since April and had become a key logistics base for Moscow.

Life in the city under the Russians was “very difficult,” says Nadiya, recalling the constant shelling, cold and hunger.

But she says she was one of the lucky few, “lucky enough to have a house with a basement and some food.”

There are many signs of the Russian occupation in Izyum.

Plumes of white smoke billowed over the city’s rooftops from sustained fire at the ammunition depot, which blew up on Saturday as Russian troops fled.

Izyum City Hall, now triumphantly adorned with the Ukrainian flag, is battle scarred, as are so many buildings in the city: houses, apartment blocks, shops, two bridges, a school and a religious building, all destroyed.

The city is still dotted with giant signs bearing Russian flags that read, “We are Russia, One United Nation.”

The Ukrainian soldiers busy securing the area haven’t had time to bring them down yet.

Back on the hilltop near the cellphone tower, 64-year-old Yuriy Kurotshka is overjoyed that his town is back in Ukrainian hands.

“All bad things come to an end,” he says.

He tried to reach his family, who had left for Kyiv in March when Russian troops first entered the city.

Yuriy has a message for the Ukrainian army: “Please never go, don’t hand over these Russians to us!”

Grygoriy Pyvovar, 61, who roams the almost deserted city with his 16-year-old son Kyrylo, tells how he met soldiers who arrived in Izyum on Sunday.

“We had tears in our eyes. We were so happy to see that our boys came here!” Grygory tells AFP.

“We didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.”

But the Ukrainian troops were not welcome at all.

Many residents say their pro-Russian neighbors made their way to the Moscow-controlled east even before Russian troops were evacuated.

Moscow says several thousand people have entered Russia from the Kharkiv region.

Abandoned Russian armored vehicles were towed away by Ukrainian military trucks around Izyum on Monday.

Ukrainian army convoys roamed the area while foot soldiers marched by or camped on the outskirts of the city.

Several dozen broken-down Russian vehicles with “Z” written on them, the symbol of the invasion, lay by the side of the road.

In addition, burned trees, craters, shrapnel and unexploded ammunition completed the picture.

In a small, newly liberated town near Izyum, soldiers have piled up ammunition left behind by the Russians.

“We definitely plan on sending all that munitions back to them as a gift from the air,” laughs a soldier nicknamed “Panzer” who’s busy securing abandoned bombs.

There’s also Russian food, but Tank jokes that his group “won’t eat that, it’s not good.”

Tank and his colleagues arrived early Sunday to conduct demining operations and disarm the traps they say Russian soldiers left behind.

Another group of soldiers comes by and says they have to come back later: they found a Russian T72 tank at the exit of the village, but the battery is dead.