Russian leaders based in Ukraine’s Kherson region began massively ramping up the relocation of up to 60,000 people on Wednesday amid warnings about Russia’s ability to withstand a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Ukrainian officials accused Russia of generating “hysteria” to force people to leave. Residents of the town of Kherson began receiving text messages Wednesday morning from the pro-Russian administration.
“Dear residents,” he said. “Evacuate immediately. There will be bombing of residential areas by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. There will be buses from 7am from Rechport [porto fluvial] to the Left Bank.”
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he had signed a law introducing martial law in Kherson and three other Ukrainian regions that the Kremlin says it has annexed, in violation of international law. The other regions are Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk.
In his first appearance on Russian state television as the Kremlin’s new commander for Ukraine, General Sergey Surovikin said late on Tuesday that the situation in Kherson was “far from simple” and “very difficult”.
“Our next plans and actions for the city of Kherson will depend on the military and tactical situation on the ground,” he said.
Ukrainian forces have been advancing in various parts of the Kherson region in recent weeks, capturing villages and farmland along the west bank of the Dnipro River, also known as the right bank.
Russia’s ability to resupply its troops at Kherson has been severely hampered by frequent Ukrainian missile and artillery attacks on Russian-controlled bridges crossing the Dnipro. The explosion earlier this month that severely damaged the Kerch Bridge, which connects Russia with Crimea, further hampered Russia’s logistics.
Last week, the head of the Russian-backed government appealed to the Kremlin to help evacuate civilians near the front lines.
On Tuesday, the rhetoric reached new heights. Shortly after 11pm local time, Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Russian-backed administration, posted a video on his Telegram channel.
“Ukrainian Nazis pushed by the West will begin their attack on Kherson very soon,” he said. “We strongly advise you to leave the right bank area.”
This morning, shortly after 8 o’clock, he continued with: “Cross as fast as possible to the left bank [lado leste] of the river Dnipro”. Hours later, the Russian-backed government even closed all entrances to the right bank of the Dnipro River for seven days.
Ukrainian officials believe that less than half of Kherson’s civilian population remains in the city – around 130,000 people.
Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-backed leader in the Kherson region, told Russian state television late on Tuesday that they plan to transport 50,000 to 60,000 people from the right bank to the left bank of the Dnipro River.
Ukrainian leaders in exile in the Kherson region accuse Russian leaders of raising “hysteria” to intimidate the population and order “voluntary deportations” to Russia, where they were promised help with housing.
“On the one hand, we understand that the Armed Forces of Ukraine will liberate Kherson and the region – so there may be active hostilities, and that is a risk for the local population,” Yurii Sobolevskyi, deputy head of Ukraine’s regional council for Kherson, said. said on Wednesday.
“On the other hand, there are no guarantees that evacuees will be safe there and away from the front lines. Now people make their own decisions – leave or stay. It’s hard to say what decision they will make.”
Russia’s “mass deportation of civilians” may, along with other alleged abuses, constitute crimes against humanity, according to a July report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In September, the UN Security Council also said that Russia’s forcible deportation of 2.5 million people from Ukraine – including 38,000 children – constitutes a violation of human rights.
Ukraine denounced Russia’s “filtering” scheme at a United Nations Security Council meeting last week. Ukrainian Deputy Ambassador to the UN Khrystyna Hayovyshyn said Ukrainians forced into Russia or Russian-controlled territory were being killed and tortured.
Hayovyshyn told the Security Council that thousands of Ukrainian citizens are being forcibly deported to “isolated and miserable regions of Siberia and the Far East.
Ukrainian citizens are terrified, under the guise of a search for “dangerous” people by Russian authorities, Hayovyshyn said. Those who hold different political views or are affiliated with the Ukrainian government or media disappear into a gray area. Children are snatched from the arms of their parents, declared the representative of Ukraine.
vital strategic city
In the heady early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Russia, when confusion reigned, the capture of the southern city of Kherson was a key strategic and propaganda victory for the Kremlin.
On the seventh day of the war, the mayor of Kherson announced that Russian soldiers had entered his office and the city had fallen.
Geographically, it was vital: Kherson sits at the mouth of Ukraine’s central artery, the Dnipro River, and not far from the canal that supplies water to Crimea. The Ukrainian government closed this canal in 2014 when Russia illegally annexed the peninsula.
It was the first major city captured by Russia and the only regional capital taken since February. (Aside from Crimea, Russian-backed forces have controlled the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014.) It is the second largest population center Russia has captured after Mariupol.
Seven months later, the Kremlin considers the Kherson region to be part of Russia, after claiming to annex it last month. And yet, everyone from Russia’s designated leaders in the region to the new commander of the entire Ukrainian war effort is sounding the alarm about his ability to withstand a Ukrainian offensive in the region.
Russia’s puppet administration has promised that there are no plans to abandon the city of Kherson and that once the military “takes care of all the tasks”, normal life will return.
In his remarks on Russian television, Surovikin, the Russian commander, repeated what has become a trope in Russian circles: that the Ukrainian military was preparing to bomb the city center of Kherson, or even to attack the dam that forms part of it. of a hydroelectric plant in Nova Kakhovka, and trigger flooding in low-lying areas.
Ukrainian officials dismissed this idea as Russian propaganda. It will not be easy for Ukraine to retake the city of Kherson if Russia seriously contests it, and the Ukrainian military will be reluctant to attack an urban center where tens of thousands of civilians could remain.
But Ukraine’s military remains optimistic about Kherson’s offensive.
“We will make significant progress by the end of the year,” the head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Agency, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, said on Tuesday.
“It will be significant victories. You’ll see soon.”
*Jo Shelley, Olga Voitovych and Olly Racz contributed to this report.
Source: CNN Brasil
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