Faced with advancing Ukrainian forces, Russia announced on Friday that it had completed the evacuation of residents of the Moscow-occupied Ukrainian region of Kherson, a transfer of…
Faced with the advance of Ukrainian forces, Russia announced on Friday that it had completed the evacuation of residents of Ukraine’s Moscow-occupied Kherson region, a population transfer described as “deportations” by Kyiv.
The Ukrainian army is preparing to fight a fierce battle to retake the city of Kherson and surrounding districts on one bank of the Dnieper River.
The city of around 288,000 pre-war inhabitants has been occupied since the early days of the Russian occupation. And the occupation has vowed to make it a “bulwark” to resist a Ukrainian offensive across the region, which the Kremlin claims should be annexed.
The authorities installed by Moscow in Kherson had demanded on October 13 the evacuation of residents of the exposed bank of the Dnieper to the other bank and then to the regions of Russia in the face of the advance of Ukrainian forces.
Therefore, this transfer of civilians would now be complete.
“The work on organizing the evacuation of residents (…) to safe regions in Russia has been completed,” declared Thursday evening Sergei Aksionov, the leader of Crimea, the neighboring Kherson peninsula annexed in 2014 by Moscow.
“I am happy that those who wanted to quickly and safely leave the territory bombed by the Ukrainian armed forces were able to do so,” he said on Telegram after visiting the region with the deputy director of the administration. Russian President Sergei Kiriyenko.
On Wednesday, the head of the Russian occupation of 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 for 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” of the Kherson region, ensuring that Moscow would inflict heavy losses on it.
Chechen losses
In 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 shelling that also left 58 wounded.
Mr Kadyrov is a supporter of a “tough” line against Kiev, having called for nuclear strikes and asserting that his troops there were waging a holy war against “Satanists”.
Elsewhere on the front, Ukrainian authorities reported Russian shelling damaged two residential buildings and a bakery in Mykolaiv, in the south, injuring one person.
In the eastern Donetsk region, five people have been killed and nine others wounded 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, Europe’s largest under Russian occupation since March.
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Moscow and Kiev have accused each other for months of dangerous bombing of the power plant, which Moscow claimed for annexation in early October, as well as four partially occupied regions of Ukraine in September.
Russia has stepped up its bombing of Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure in recent weeks, so that power is rationed across much of the country.
Vladimir Putin also accused Ukraine of preparing to detonate a “dirty bomb,” charges that Kiev and the West have denounced as “absurd” and could serve as a pretext for Moscow to escalate.
Speaking at a political forum on Thursday, the Russian president called for a mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to be sent “as soon as possible” to Ukraine. It plans to conduct an “independent verification” this week.
Finally, Vladimir Putin assessed on Thursday that the world was entering its “most dangerous” decade since the end of World War II, enlisting the conflict he started in Ukraine in a global war against Western hegemony.
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A woman is evacuated from Kherson, a Ukrainian city occupied by Russian troops, on October 26, 2022.
• STRINGER
Map of the situation in Ukraine as of October 28 at 08:00 GMT
• Sophie RAMIS
