Russian-installed authorities in Ukraine have told all residents of Kherson to leave “immediately” ahead of an expected advance by Ukrainian troops waging a counteroffensive to recapture one of the first urban areas Russia took after invading the country.
In a post on the Telegram messaging service, the pro-Kremlin regional administration called on civilians to use boat crossings over a major river to move deeper into Russian-held territory, citing a tense situation on the front and the threat of shelling and alleged “terror attacks” by Kyiv.
Kherson has been in Russian hands since the early days of the nearly eight-month war in Ukraine.
The city is the capital of a region of the same name, one of four that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last month and put under Russian martial law on Thursday.
On Friday, Ukrainian forces bombarded Russian positions across the province, targeting resupply routes across the Dnipro River and inching closer to making a full assault on Kherson city.
Ukraine has retaken some villages in the region’s north since launching its counteroffensive in late August.
Russian-installed officials were reported as trying desperately to turn Kherson city — a prime objective for both sides because of its key industries and ports — into a fortress while attempting to relocate tens of thousands of residents.
The Kremlin poured as many as 2,000 draftees into the surrounding region to replenish losses and strengthen frontline units, according to the Ukrainian army’s general staff.
The Dnipro River figures prominently in the regional battle because it serves multiple critical functions.
It provides crossings for supplies, troops and civilians; drinking water for southern Ukraine and the annexed Crimean Peninsula; and power generation from a hydro-electric station.
Much of the area, including the power station and a canal feeding water to Crimea, is under Russian control.
Kherson’s Kremlin-backed authorities previously announced plans to evacuate all Russia-appointed officials and as many as 60,000 civilians across the river, in what local leader Volodymyr Saldo said would be an “organised, gradual displacement”.
Another Russia-installed official estimated on Saturday that about 25,000 people from across the region had made their way over the Dnipro.
In a Telegram post, Kirill Stremousov claimed civilians were relocating willingly.
“People are actively moving because today the priority is life. We do not drag anyone anywhere,” he said.
Ukrainian and Western officials have expressed concern about potential forced transfers of residents to Russia or Russian-occupied territory.
Ukrainian officials have urged Kherson residents to resist attempts to relocate them, with one local official alleging that Moscow wanted to take civilians hostage and use them as human shields.
Russia renews efforts to target key infrastructure
Elsewhere in Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of people in the country’s central and western regions woke up on Saturday to power outages and periodic bursts of gunfire.
In its latest war tactic, Russia has intensified strikes on power stations, water supply systems and other key infrastructure across the country.
Ukraine’s air force said in a statement on Saturday that Russia had launched “a massive missile attack” targeting “critical infrastructure”, adding that it had downed 18 out of 33 cruise missiles launched from the air and sea.
Ukraine says it shot down ‘most’ missiles
In a Telegram post published later on Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy referenced 36 missiles, “most of which were shot down”.
The reason for the discrepancy in numbers was not immediately clear.
Air raid sirens blared across Ukraine twice by early afternoon, sending residents scurrying into shelters as Ukrainian air defence tried to shoot down explosive drones and incoming missiles.
“Several rockets” targeting Ukraine’s capital were shot down on Saturday morning, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram.
The president’s office said in its morning update that five suicide drones were downed in the central Cherkasy region south-east of Kyiv.
The governors of six western and central provinces, as well as of the southern Odesa region on the Black Sea, gave similar reports.
Ukraine’s top diplomat said the day’s attacks proved Ukraine needed new Western-reinforced air defence systems “without a minute of delay”.
“Air defence saves lives,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said on Telegram that almost 1.4 million households lost power as a result of strikes.
He said some 672,000 homes in the western Khmelnytskyi region were affected and another 242,000 suffered outages in the Cherkasy region.
Most of the western city of Khmelnytskyi, which straddles the Bug River and had a pre-war population of 275,000, was left with no electricity, shortly after local media reported several loud explosions.
Residents urged to store water and conserve power
In a social media post on Saturday, the city council urged local residents to store water “in case it’s also gone within an hour”.
The mayor of Lutsk, a city of 215,000 in far western Ukraine, made a similar appeal on Saturday. Power in Lutsk was partially knocked out after Russian missiles slammed into local energy facilities, Mayor Ihor Polishchuk said.
He later added that a civilian suffered burns when a shock wave from the strike hit his house, and that one power station had been damaged beyond repair.
The central city of Uman, a key pilgrimage centre for Hasidic Jews with about 100,000 residents before the war, also was plunged into darkness after a rocket hit a nearby power station, regional authorities said on Telegram.
Ukraine’s state energy company, Ukrenergo, responded to the strikes by announcing that rolling blackouts would be imposed in Kyiv and 10 Ukrainian regions to stabilise the situation.
In a Facebook post on Saturday, the company accused Russia of attacking “energy facilities within the principal networks of the western regions of Ukraine”.
It claimed the scale of destruction was comparable to the fallout earlier this month from Moscow’s first coordinated attack on the Ukrainian energy grid.
Both Ukrenergo and officials in Kyiv have urged Ukrainians to conserve energy. Earlier this week, Mr Zelenskyy called on consumers to curb their power use between 7am and 11am and to avoid using energy-guzzling appliances such as electric heaters.
Mr Zelenskyy said earlier in the week that 30 per cent of Ukraine’s power stations had been destroyed since Russia launched the first wave of targeted infrastructure strikes on October 10.
AP
