South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Kherson city residents told to leave
Pro-Kremlin officials cite shelling threat, Kyiv ‘terror attacks’
KYIV, Ukraine — Russian-installed authorities in Ukraine told all residents of the city of Kherson to leave “immediately” Saturday 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 strongly urged 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 plans for “terror attacks” by Kyiv.
Kherson has been in Russian hands since the early days of the war. 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 martial law Thursday.
On Friday, Ukrainian forces bombarded Russian positions across the province, targeting pro-Kremlin forces’ resupply routes across the Dnieper River and preparing for a final push to reclaim the 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.
Taking control of Kherson has allowed Russia to resume fresh water supplies from the Dnieper to Crimea,
which were cut by Ukraine after Moscow’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula. A big hydroelectric power plant upstream from Kherson city is a key source of energy for the southern region. Ukraine and Russia accused each other of trying to blow it up to flood the mostly flat region.
Kherson’s Kremlinbacked authorities previously announced plans to evacuate all Russia-appointed officials and as many as 60,000 civilians across the river, in what local leader Vladimir Saldo said would be an “organized, gradual displacement.”
Another Russia-installed official estimated Saturday that around 25,000 people from across the region had made their way over the
Dnieper. 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 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.
Elsewhere, hundreds of thousands of people in central and western Ukraine 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 Saturday that Russia had launched “a massive missile attack” targeting “critical infrastructure,” adding that it had downed 18 of 33 cruise missiles launched from the air and sea.
Air raid sirens blared across Ukraine twice by early afternoon, sending residents into shelters as Ukrainian air defense tried to shoot down explosive drones and missiles.
“Several rockets” targeting Ukraine’s capital were shot down Saturday morning, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office said that five suicide drones were downed in the central Cherkasy region southeast of Kyiv. Similar reports came from the governors of six western and central provinces, as well as of the southern Odesa region on the Black Sea.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter that the day’s attacks proved Ukraine needed new Western-reinforced air defense systems “without a minute of delay.”
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 the strikes.
Most of the western city of Khmelnytskyi, which had a prewar population of 275,000, was left with no electricity shortly after local media reported several loud explosions. The central city of Uman, a key pilgrimage center for Hasidic Jews with about 100,000 residents before the war, was plunged into darkness after a rocket hit a nearby power plant.
In a Facebook post on Saturday, Ukraine’s state energy company, Ukrenergo, 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.