KYIV, Ukraine — Russian occupation officials were moving civilians out of Kherson on Wednesday, another sign that Moscow’s hold on the strategic southern Ukrainian city was slipping, as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia sought to reassert control over that and other occupied regions by declaring martial law.
The move by Mr. Putin was an effort to tighten the Kremlin’s authority over Kherson and three other Ukrainian regions he recently claimed to annex, even as his army loses ground in those areas to Ukrainian forces and as Western allies dismiss the annexations as illegal.
As Russian proxy officials in Kherson said they would move as many as 60,000 civilians to the western side of the Dnipro River and shift its civilian administration there, they appeared to be girding for an all-out battle for control of the region. Amid a weekslong Ukrainian counteroffensive, the pro-Kremlin leader in Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, said the relocations would protect civilians and help Russian forces fortify defenses to “repel any attack.”
Ukrainian officials dismissed the plans as “a propaganda show.” Andriy Yermak, the head President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, accused the Russian proxies of scaring civilians with claims that Ukraine would shell the city. He called it “a rather primitive tactic, given that the armed forces do not fire at Ukrainian cities — this is done exclusively by Russian terrorists.”
Ukrainian forces have been advancing gradually for weeks along both sides of the river in Kherson, a region that Moscow seized early in the war and has declared part of Russia. Since late August, Ukrainian troops have damaged bridges near the city of Kherson, making it harder for Moscow to resupply the thousands of troops it has stationed there.
Western analysts have suggested that the Russian positions in and around the city are untenable without the bridges, and United States officials have said that Russian commanders have urged a retreat from Kherson, only to be overruled by Mr. Putin. But Ukraine’s counteroffensive in Kherson has moved more slowly than its recent advances in the east, and it was far from clear whether its forces could soon mount a push to retake the city.
On Tuesday, the newly appointed commander of the Russian invasion, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, said he was ready to make “difficult decisions” about the military deployments in the Kherson region, without specifying what those decisions would entail.
On Wednesday, the Kremlin-installed deputy leader of the region, Kirill Stremousov, insisted that Russian forces were ready to defeat any attack. He said in a post on the Telegram messaging app that the situation as of Wednesday morning was “unchanged,” but advised civilians on the eastern side of the Dnipro River to evacuate to the western bank.
In an earlier television interview, the pro-Russian leader of Kherson, Mr. Saldo, said that he had decided to evacuate residents because of the threat that Ukraine might breach a hydroelectric dam, causing flooding on the river’s eastern side. The government in Kyiv considers Mr. Saldo and Mr. Stremousov traitors.
It was not immediately clear how many residents would heed the calls by the pro-Kremlin officials or whether the evacuations would be voluntary. Many civilians have already fled the region. Ukraine has also accused Russia of forcibly relocating thousands of people to Russian territory since the war began.
Ukrainian officials have greeted the hints of a Russian pullback from the western bank of the Dnipro River with caution, saying the announcements could be intended for internal Russian audiences, signaling a commitment to protecting civilians, or preparation for Russian military action in the area. Videos released in the Russian news media showed lines of civilians apparently boarding ferries at a river port to evacuate to the eastern bank of the river.
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October 19, 2022 at 08:10PM
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