Kherson has become the first major Ukrainian city on Wednesday to fall to Russian forces since the invasion began, the city’s mayor and a senior Ukrainian government official confirmed to The New York Times. “There is no Ukrainian army here,” Mayor Igor Kolykhaev said in an interview. “The city is surrounded.” Video and photos showed Russian troops controlling a government administrative building, the Times reported, and Kolykhaev said a handful of Russian troops, including a commander, entered city hall on Wednesday and told him they would be setting up a new administration. It followed what The Daily Beast’s correspondents described as a “horrific battle” for the city. Earlier on Wednesday, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense had denied that Kherson had fallen and a Pentagon official described the southern city as “contested.”