KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s Russian-installed government on Saturday called on all citizens of the city of Kherson to leave “immediately” ahead of an expected advance by Ukrainian troops conducting a counteroffensive to retake one of the first urban spaces captured in Russia after invading the country.
In a message on the Telegram messaging service, the pro-Kremlin regional management suggested civilians use boat crossings on a major river to push deeper into Russian-controlled territory, bringing up a tense scenario on the front lines and the risk of bombing and alleged plans for “terrorist attacks” across Kyiv.
Kherson has been in Russian hands since the early days of the nearly 8-month war in Ukraine. The city is the capital of a region of the same name, one of 4 that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last month and subdued to Russia. Martial law on Thursday.
On Friday, Ukrainian forces shelled Russian positions in the province, targeting the pro-Kremlin forces’ home routes through the Dnieper and preparing for a final push to retake the city. Ukraine has recaptured some villages in the north of the region since launching its counteroffensive in August in August.
Russian-installed officials reportedly desperately tried to turn the town of Kherson, a number one purpose for both sides due to its key industries and ports, into a castle while trying to relocate tens of thousands of residents.
The Kremlin has sent up to 2,000 recruits to the surrounding region to fill casualties and reinforce frontline units, to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Army.
The wide Dnieper River figures as a main element in the fighting, making it difficult for Russia to get its troops protecting the town of Kherson and nearby spaces on the west bank after ruthless Ukrainian movements rendered major crossing problems useless.
The capture of Kherson allowed Russia to resume new water materials from the Dnieper to Crimea, cut through Ukraine after Moscow annexed the Black Sea peninsula. A giant hydroelectric plant upstream of the city of Kherson is a key source of energy for the southern region. Ukraine and Russia have accused others of trying to blow it up to flood the most commonly flat region.
The Kremlin-backed government in Kherson had in the past announced plans to evacuate all Russian-appointed officials and up to 60,000 civilians across the river, in what local leader Vladimir Saldo said was a “slow and organized move. “
Another Russia-based official estimated Saturday that about 25,000 more people from across the region had crossed the Dnieper. In a Telegram article, Kirill Stremousov claimed that civilians were moving voluntarily.
“People are actively moving because today the priority is life. We are not dragging ourselves anywhere,” he said, adding that some citizens would possibly wait for the Ukrainian army to retake the city.
Ukrainian and Western officials have expressed fear over imaginable forced transfers of citizens to Russia or Russian-occupied territory.
Ukrainian officials suggested Kherson’s citizens try to transfer them, and a local official alleged that Moscow sought to take civilians hostage and use them as human shields.
Elsewhere in the invaded country, thousands of others in central and western Ukraine woke up Saturday to force periodic cuts and bursts of gunfire. Key infrastructure across the country.
Ukraine’s air force said on Saturday that Russia had introduced “a major missile attack” targeting “critical infrastructure,” adding that it had shot down 18 of the 33 cruise missiles introduced from the air and sea.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later said Russia had introduced 36 missiles, of which the maximum had been shot down.
“These treacherous strikes on services of great importance are tactics characteristic of terrorists,” Zelenskyy said. “The world can and will have to prevent this terror. “
Airstrike sirens sounded twice in Ukraine in the early afternoon, sending citizens to shelters as Ukrainian air defenses tried to shoot down explosive drones and incoming missiles.
“Several rockets” in the Ukrainian capital were shot down on Saturday morning, Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said on Telegram.
The president said in his morning update that five suicide drones were shot down in the central Cherkasy region, southeast of Kiev. Similar reports came from the governors of six western and central provinces, as well as the southern Black Sea region of Odessa. .
Ukraine’s most sensible diplomat said the day’s strikes showed Ukraine needed new air defense systems bolstered across the West “without a minute of delay. “
“Air saves lives,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said on Telegram that nearly 1. 4 million homes have been left without power as a result of the strikes. He said some 672,000 houses in the western Khmelnytskyi region were affected and 242,000 suffered cuts in the Cherkasy region. .
Most of the western town of Khmelnytskyi, which straddles the Bug River and had a pre-war population of 275,000, was left without power shortly after local media reported several loud explosions.
In a social media post on Saturday, the city council suggested local citizens buy the water “in case it also runs out within an hour. “
The mayor of Lutsk, a city of 215,000 in Ukraine’s far west, appealed and said the city’s electricity had been partially cut off after Russian missiles hit local force facilities and broke an irreparable power plant.
The central city of Uman, a key pilgrimage center for Hasidic Jews with a pre-war population of around 100,000, was also plunged into darkness after a rocket hit a nearby power plant.
Ukraine’s state-owned electricity company, Ukrenergo, responded to the measures by pronouncing that blackouts would be imposed in Kyiv and 10 Ukrainian regions to stabilize the situation.
In a Facebook post on Saturday, the company accused Russia of attacking “energy services on primary grids in the western regions of Ukraine. “He said the scale of the destruction is comparable to this month’s fallout from Moscow’s first coordinated attack on Ukraine’s power grid.
Officials in Ukrenergo and Kyiv suggested Ukrainians save energy. Earlier this week, Zelenskyy called on consumers to restrict their energy consumption between 7 a. m. m. y 11 a. m. And avoid energy-intensive appliances, such as electric heaters.
Zelenskyy said earlier in the week that 30 of Ukraine’s military plants had been destroyed since Russia introduced the first wave of targeted infrastructure movements on Oct. 10.
In a separate event, Russian authorities said two other people were killed and 12 others wounded by the Ukrainian shelling of the city of Shebekino in the Belgorod region near the border.