Kherson evacuating hospitals under relentless Russian shelling
KYIV, UKRAINE >> As Russia's invasion of Ukraine entered its 10th month, Russian artillery pounded the strategic southern port city of Kherson two weeks after retreating from it, killing at least 10 civilians and wounding dozens more — and Friday, triggering a hospital evacuation.
Russian forces shelled the city and surrounding area 49 times Thursday and Friday, the head of the Kherson regional military administra- tion, Yaroslav Yanushevych, said. Thursday was one of the deadliest days since the Kremlin ordered its forces to retreat.
“Due to constant Russian shelling, we are evacuating hospital patients from Kherson,” Yanushevych said. Pediatric patients were transferred to Mykolaiv, he said, while 100 patients from the regional psychiatric care facility were moved to Odesa.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address late Thursday that Russia had begun shelling as “revenge” after Ukrainian troops reclaimed the city.
“Almost every hour, I receive reports of strikes” in the Kherson region, Zelenskyy said. “Such terror began immediately after the Russian army was forced to flee from the Kherson region. This is the revenge of those who lost.”
Several more civilians, including a 13-year-old boy, were killed in blasts this week.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February, more than 6,557 civilians have died and about 10,000 others have been wounded, according to a report last week by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The true toll is thought to be significantly higher.
March was the deadliest month of the war so far.
And over the past month, as Russia has assumed defensive positions in the face of Ukrainian advances in the south and northeast, Moscow has escalated its aerial bombardment of energy infrastructure targets in cities and towns across Ukraine.
“Together, we endured nine months of full-scale war, and Russia has not found a way to break us, and will not find one,” Zelenskyy said.
Ukrainian officials have encouraged people in the Kherson area to leave for other parts of the country and have started running trains to and from the city to bring humanitarian relief.
But Serhii Khlan, the deputy regional administrator in Kherson, said many of the 80,000 who remain do not want to leave their homes despite the hardships.
“They say: `We were living 8 1/2 months of occupation here, we survived,'” he said. “We'll survive, everything will get better. We will stay in our homes.”
Kherson remains without heat and electricity after departing Russian soldiers blew up much of the region's critical infrastructure.
Elsewhere in the country, officials have been racing to restore energy infrastructure destroyed in waves of Russian missile attacks, including on three nuclear plants under Ukrainian control. All three plants were back online by Friday and would soon be producing energy at normal capacity, the head of the national energy utility said, two days after Russian attacks forced utility crews to scramble to stabilize the country's crippled energy grid, and raised further concerns about the nuclear perils of the war.
Ukraine typically relies on nuclear power for more than half of its electricity, an uncommonly high rate of dependence.
In Russia, where there is a growing outcry over the mobilization of untrained young men who are perishing on the front lines in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin presided over a highly choreographed event at his residence outside Moscow, where he met with mothers of servicemen fighting in Ukraine and said he shares their pain.
The televised event, just days before the country marks its Mother's Day on Sunday, came amid intensifying public criticism over the conditions recent Russian conscripts have been forced to bear, including being thrown into combat illequipped and ill-prepared. Some of the 17 women who attended said they had lost their sons on the battlefield.
Since Putin announced a national draft in September, social-media networks in Russia have been filled with videos said to be recorded by soldiers and their relatives describing dire conditions, organizational chaos, mistreatment and threats of imprisonment if they protest.
Activists said participants in the meeting Friday were probably preselected by the Kremlin and had their questions screened beforehand. Some appeared to be government officials and progovernment activists, according to a list published by the Kremlin.