Russia urges civilians to ‘leave with their children’ and evacuate Kherson for their own safety in a sign of Vladimir Putin’s weakening hold on the annexed region as Ukrainian forces continue to advance
- Evacuees to begin arriving in Russia on Friday following calls to leave Kherson
- Moscow-installed official Vladimir Saldo urged civilians to ‘leave with children’
- Calls to evacuate are a sign of Russia’s weakening hold on ‘annexed territory’
- Civilians were told to leave over fear of Kyiv advances, notably missile strikes
Russia has urged civilians to ‘leave with their children’ and evacuate Kherson for their own safety in a sign of Vladimir Putin’s weakening hold on the annexed region as Ukrainian forces continue to advance.
Evacuees are expected to begin arriving in Russia on Friday after a Moscow-installed official strongly urged residents to leave Ukraine’s southern Kherson region.
Vladimir Saldo had urged all civilians to ‘protect themselves’ as he cited daily rocket attacks by Kyiv forces.
The Kherson administration chief was speaking mainly to residents on the west bank of the Dnipro River which includes the regional capital – the only major Ukrainian city Russia has captured intact since Putin began his invasion in February.
‘We suggested that all residents of the Kherson region, if they wish, to protect themselves from the consequences of missile strikes, … go to other regions,’ Saldo said in a video message.
And it has now been claimed that the first civilians fleeing from Kherson are due to arrive in Russia’s southern region of Rostov on Friday, TASS news agency reports.
Kherson is one of four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces that Russia claims to have annexed in recent weeks, and arguably the most strategically important.
It controls both the only land route to the Crimea peninsula Russia seized in 2014, and the mouth of the Dnipro, the 2,200-kilometre-long (1,367-mile-long) river that bisects Ukraine.
Russia has urged civilians to ‘leave with their children’ and evacuate Kherson for their own safety. Pictured: Ukrainian troops check Russian trenches in retaken Kherson
Vladimir Saldo had urged civilians to ‘save themselves’ and ‘leave with their children’ as he cited daily rocket attacks by Kyiv forces. Pictured: Ukrainian soldiers retook settlements in Kherson last week
Since the start of October, Ukrainian forces have burst through Russia’s front lines there in their biggest advance in the south since the war began.
They have since been advancing rapidly along the west bank, aiming to cut off thousands of Russian troops from supply lines and potential escape routes across it.
TASS quoted the governor of Rostov, which borders on the Ukrainian territories Russia claims to have annexed, as saying his region was prepared to host anyone who chose to leave Kherson.
Russia has deployed many of its best-trained troops to defend Kherson’s west bank so a flight of civilians would be a humiliating blow to Moscow’s claim to have annexed around 15 per cent of Ukraine’s territory.
A major issue is that troops across the west bank can only be supplied across the river, which is several kilometres wide and has few crossing.
Call to evacuate from Saldo (pictured shaking Putin’s hand) is a sign of Russia’s weakening hold on territory it claims to have annexed
In the past two weeks Ukraine has recaptured a swath of territory, with its forces bearing down towards the three kilometre long (two mile long) Nova Kakhovka dam that provides one of the last river crossings.
Ukraine’s gains in the south this month followed rapid gains in the east since September.
Mykolaiv, the nearest big Ukrainian-held city to Kherson, came under massive Russian bombardment on Thursday, with civilian facilities hit, local officials said.
Regional governor Vitaly Kim said the top two floors of a five-story residential building were destroyed and the rest were under rubble.
Video footage provided by state emergency services showed rescuers pulling out an 11-year-old boy who Kim said had spent six hours trapped under the rubble.
In the east, three Russian missiles exploded on Thursday morning near the central market in Kupiansk, a major railway junction city that Ukrainian forces recaptured in September.
The missiles destroyed shops, carpeting surrounding streets with glass shards, rubble, and twisted metal sheets.
Ukrainian soldiers were pictured checking Russian trenches where supplies had been left behind
Pictured: A box with ammunition lies on the ground where trenches were dug by Russian soldiers
Pictured: A pan with old food was seen in an area that appeared to be used as a canteen before Ukrainian advances were made
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address on Thursday that ‘brutal’ fighting continued in the wine- and salt-producing town of Bakhmut on the frontline in the eastern Donetsk region, another area Russia has attempted to annex.
Zelensky said Ukrainian troops were defending Bakhmut with ‘skilful and heroic actions.’
Russian and Moscow-backed separatist forces view the town as a major objective and have captured several nearby villages.
Russian troops had advanced up to 2 km (1.24 miles) towards the town, British intelligence said Monday, though analysts said the frontline was fluid.
Putin has responded to the battlefield setbacks with dramatic moves to escalate the conflict: proclaiming the annexation of territory, calling up hundreds of thousands of reservists and repeatedly threatening to use nuclear weapons to protect Russia.
During a Dynamo Kyiv fixture last night, a Ukrainian fan proclaimed that Kherson belonged to Ukraine
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday after a two-day meeting of defence ministers that the alliance would not drop support for Ukraine because of Moscow’s nuclear threats. Many countries pledged new military aid for Ukraine.
‘We will not be intimidated,’ Stoltenberg told reporters. ‘…They know that if they use [a] nuclear weapon against Ukraine, it will have severe consequences.’
This week, Russia launched the biggest air strikes since the start of the war, firing more than 100 cruise missiles mainly at Ukraine’s electricity and heat infrastructure.
Putin said the strikes were retaliation for a blast on Saturday that damaged Russia’s Kerch bridge to Crimea.
Zelensky on Thursday said Ukraine had about only 10 per cent of what it needed to protect itself against Russian air attacks.
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