Newly Appointed Russian Commander Laments ‘Very Difficult’ Situation in Kherson as Kyiv Leads Advance in South
Colonel General Sergey Surovikin, then commander of Russian forces in Syria, speaks at a briefing at the Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow on June 9, 2017.
Moscow-backed General Sergey Surovikin declared the status of Russia’s “special military operation” in Kherson “very difficult” amid Kyiv’s efforts to retake the southern region from Ukraine.
“The Russian army will ensure the safe evacuation of the population,” Surovikin said.
Ukraine has made significant inroads towards Kherson in recent weeks, along the western (or right) bank of the Dnipro River. The head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Agency said he hopes to recapture the city by the end of the year.
The Kremlin announced last week that its forces would help evacuate residents of occupied Kherson to other areas out of harm’s way, in the latest sign that Russian forces are fighting Ukrainian advances.
The Ukrainian deputy head of the Kherson region called the “evacuations” from Russia a “semi-voluntary deportation of the Ukrainian population.” The practice has raised serious concerns from international bodies and human rights groups, who have said it may constitute a crime once morest humanity.
The Ukrainian military said on Monday that Russian forces were busy building fortifications in the Kherson region and moving civilians into Crimea.
The Russian-backed leader in Ukraine’s Kherson region also announced Tuesday that there would be a new “organized relocation” of civilians away from frontline settlements.
“I have made the difficult but correct decision to announce the organized relocation of the civilian population of the Beryslav, Bilozerka, Snihurivka and Oleksandrivka communities to the left bank of the Dnipro River,” Vladimir Saldo said on Telegram, referring to the eastern bank of the Dnipro. river.
“This decision was motivated by the creation of large-scale defensive fortifications to be able to repel any attack. There is no place for civilians where the military operates. Let the Russian army do its job.”
Saldo said that civilians who decided to move “to the regions of Russia” would receive housing assistance.
Some background: a July report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) claimed that Russia’s “mass deportation of civilians” might constitute, along with other alleged abuses, crimes once morest humanity.
The OSCE mission that produced the report wrote that 1.3 million Ukrainian citizens had been deported once morest their will to Russia and said there was evidence that tens of thousands of civilians had been detained in so-called filtering centers before being transported to Russian-controlled areas in eastern Ukraine.
