Kyiv, Ukraine, Oct 19 (AFP/APP):Russia began evacuating civilians from Kherson in southern Ukraine on Wednesday in the face of advances by Kyiv, which said the population transfers amounted to “deportations”.
As battlefield developments continued to stretch Russia, President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday imposed sweeping new security measures in a swathe of Russian regions and declared martial law in four areas of
Ukraine recently annexed by Moscow.
Moscow continued to rain down missiles and munitions on all corners of Ukraine, including Kyiv and the country’s west, which was spared the brunt of the Russian onslaught earlier in the conflict.
Ukraine said it had downed “several Russian rockets” over Kyiv in the third consecutive day of attacks on the capital.
– Creating ‘panic’ –
A Ukrainian representative in the Kherson region called the push by Russia to evacuate the city of the same name the “equivalent of deportation”. The city has been in Moscow’s hands since the earliest days of the invasion.
“(Putin’s) aim is to create a kind of panic in Kherson and an image (to fuel) propaganda,” Sergiy Khlan said Ukrainian forces were still pushing their counter-offensive southward.
He said the Russians were using the evacuations as a “pretext” to justify “their withdrawal from Kherson and more generally from the right bank” of the Dnieper river.
Pro-Russian officials in the Ukraine town of Oleshky on the other side of the river said residents from Kherson city were already arriving.
Russia’s Rossiya 24 TV showed images of people waiting to board ferries to cross the river, unable to use bridges put out of action by Ukraine.
Vladimir Saldo, the Kherson region’s Moscow-installed head, told Russian state television that the city’s administration would relocate to the eastern bank of the Dnieper.
But Khlan, the Ukrainian lawmaker, said evacuees were destined for Russia’s southern Krasnodar region.
“Russia is carrying out deportations as in Soviet times,” he said.
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