“The (Russian) occupiers are present in all the streets of the city, and they are very dangerous,” the head of the regional administration, Gennady Lakhota, said in a message on the Telegram app.
Igor Kulekhaev, the mayor of the city, which has a population of 290,000 people, announced that he had spoken with “armed invitees”, referring to the Russian military, whom he did not name.
Earlier on Thursday night, Kulekhaev said that “the city is surrounded” by Russian forces, noting that the situation in the capital of the southern region is tense with Russian forces entering the city and seizing administrative buildings.
