Ukrainian troops are at the gates of Kherson, advancing towards one of the bloodiest battles of the war. The only provincial capital conquered by Russia as of February 24 — the day the total invasion of Ukraine began — lives under the uncertainty of what may happen in the coming days, whether it will be a siege that will devastate the city or whether Russian forces are withdrawing from it to avoid being isolated, as the occupying authorities and pro-Russian analysts have indicated in recent hours. The pressure on the population that continues in Kherson has intensified to arrest informants and local partisans who collaborate with the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The Ukrainian army is located just 12 kilometers from Kherson, in the south of Ukraine, the most western conquest of the country that Russia maintains. The intelligence services of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry insist that Russian defenses are preparing for urban combat. One of the advantages in its favor is an extensive network of informers and saboteurs who are preparing in the Russian rear. Two weeks ago, during a telephone interview for this newspaper, a representative of Ukrainian partisan groups in Kherson assured that they were ready to attack inside the city against Russian defenses and divert their attention to facilitate the entry of Ukrainian military units. And he added that “thousands of men” had left their homes to avoid being watched or forced to join pro-Russian paramilitary militias.
Kirill Stremousov, the military governor of the Russian-occupied Kherson region, has issued messages in recent days suggesting the situation is tense. On Thursday he shared a video on his Telegram account in which he lamented, at street level, that part of the citizenry ignored his call to leave the city. On Friday he released confusing messages about a possible 24-hour curfew in the municipality to prevent the action of what he considers “provocative and terrorists.” In the first instance he announced this measure, which was even disclosed by the Russian state agency Ria Novosti, but a few hours later he specified that there were no restrictions for the population. Stremousov did underline: “In the city there is a control for 24 hours, seven days a week, to find the provocateurs and collaborators of the Ukrainian Nazis.” According to Russian propaganda, both the Ukrainian Army and its Government are made up of fascists.
Security forces of the Ukrainian government in Kherson reported on Friday that arrests and deportation of people suspected of collaborating with the Ukrainian army have been increasing in the occupied regions. The Ukrainian police also assures that the looting, the confiscation of boats and the destruction of elements on the Dnieper River quays that could facilitate the landing of Ukrainian troops from the western bank, where the capital of the province is located, have intensified. and the eastern side.
Pro-Russian voices such as Stremousov’s have stated that the military withdrawal from the right bank of the Dnieper, where the urban center of Kherson is located, is almost inevitable. Well-known Russian military analysts on Telegram also assume that Russian defenses will move to the other side of the river. Separ, an account of a Russian soldier reporting from the Kherson front, published this Friday that most of his units have already left the city for the eastern bank of the Dnieper, and that the population is being evacuated with the promise of granting them a new home. In addition, according to this military officer, the Russian authorities are compulsorily evicting the population on the western side of the river within a radius of 15 kilometers. The Ukrainian government denounces that tens of thousands of people have been forcibly transferred to other provinces occupied by Russia, especially Crimea, and to Russian territory.
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In its daily report on the situation of the war, the Conflict Intelligence Team defense research center provided more data on the theoretical Russian withdrawal from military analysts and its own intelligence information. Some of the orders from the Russian high command consist of the immediate evacuation of 60,000 people in the city, the looting of pieces of Kherson’s heritage, as well as the destruction of systems to cross the river and telecommunications infrastructure. Dva Mayora, a Russian military account on Telegram, detailed on Thursday that Russian supplies to withstand the winter siege of Kherson are at risk from the Ukrainian offensive in the north of the province, in addition to considering the fact that that “the territory has not been cleansed of spies.”
The Ukrainian General Staff argues that the warnings from the Russian side of a withdrawal in Kherson are false and that they seek to confuse their tactics. The same Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, stated last week that Russia was barricading itself in the city to defend it and that there were no signs that they had abandoned their positions, beyond preparing exit plans to avoid being isolated on the western bank of the river. Dnieper.
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