The Ukrainian army is preparing to fight a fierce battle to retake the city of Kherson and the surrounding districts on a bank of the Dnieper river.
The city of some 288,000 pre-war inhabitants has been occupied since the early days of the Russian invasion. And the occupation has sworn to make it a “fortress” to resist the Ukrainian offensive in this entire region, which the Kremlin claims should be annexed.
The authorities installed by Moscow in Kherson had demanded on October 13 the evacuation of the inhabitants of the exposed bank of the Dnieper to the other bank then to regions of Russia in the face of the advance of Ukrainian forces.
This transfer of civilians would therefore now be complete.
“The work organizing the departure of the inhabitants (…) towards safe regions in Russia is completed”, declared Thursday evening Sergei Aksionov, the leader of Crimea, neighboring peninsula of Kherson annexed in 2014 by Moscow.
“I am happy that those who wanted to quickly and safely leave the territory bombarded by the Ukrainian armed forces were able to do so,” he said on Telegram after visiting the region with the deputy director of administration. Russian President Sergei Kiriyenko.
On Wednesday, the head of the Russian occupation in Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, claimed that at least 70,000 residents had left their homes in less than a week.
The Ukrainian military command noted in its daily report on the last 24 hours published on Friday that “the so-called evacuation of the temporarily occupied territory of the Kherson region continues”.
He noted a “reinforcement of the enemy group on the right bank part” of the Kherson region, while ensuring to inflict heavy losses on Moscow.
– Chechen losses –
A sign of the intensity of the fighting near Kherson, the leader of the Russian republic of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, whose forces are fighting in Ukraine, announced the death of 23 of his soldiers in a Ukrainian bombardment which also left 58 injured.
Mr. Kadyrov is a supporter of the “hard” line against kyiv, having called for nuclear strikes and ensuring that his troops there were waging a holy war against “satanists”.
Elsewhere on the front, Ukrainian authorities reported Russian shelling that damaged two residential buildings and a bakery in Mykolaiv, in the south, injuring one person.
In the Donetsk region in the east, five people have been killed and 9 others injured in the past 24 hours, including in Bakhmout, another hot spot on the front that Russian forces have been trying to take since the summer, according to the regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Russian officials Sergei Aksionov and Sergei Kirienko announced Thursday evening that they had visited the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe under Russian occupation since March.
Moscow and kyiv have accused each other for months of dangerous bombardments of this power station, which Moscow claimed for annexation earlier in October, as well as that of four partially occupied Ukrainian regions in September.
Russia has stepped up bombardments targeting Ukrainian electricity infrastructure in recent weeks, so that power is rationed in most of the country.
Vladimir Putin also accused Ukraine of preparing the explosion of a “dirty bomb”, allegations that kyiv and the West have denounced as “absurd” and which could serve Moscow as a pretext for an escalation.
Speaking at a political forum on Thursday, the Russian president called for sending a mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to Ukraine “as soon as possible”. The latter intends to conduct an “independent verification” this week.
Finally, Vladimir Putin estimated Thursday that the world was entering its “most dangerous” decade since the end of the Second World War, registering the conflict which he launched in Ukraine in a global fight against Western hegemonism.
