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| Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images |
As Ukrainians push toward occupied Kherson, the Russian occupiers on Oct. 18 said they would move up to 60,000 Ukrainian civilians to occupied parts of Ukraine or Russia.
The occupation authorities called it an “evacuation,” saying that Ukrainian forces are likely to attack the city. The Russians have already subjected more than a million Ukrainians throughout the country to forcible deportation and resettlement.
It is not clear how many Kherson Oblast residents agreed to go. Social media suggested at least several hundred waited for ferries in the eponymous regional capital on Oct. 19.
As of the evening of Oct. 19, Kherson-based Telegram channels reported loud explosions on the outskirts of the city. An anonymous Ukrainian soldier, who was not authorized to talk, told the Kyiv Independent there are signs that Ukraine is preparing another offensive in the region. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are maintaining strict silence for operational security.
Kirill Stremousov, one of the top Russian proxies in Kherson Oblast, said on Oct. 19 that Ukrainian forces might soon start advancing on Kherson and called on locals to flee.
Volodymyr Saldo, a Ukrainian politician and Russia collaborator who’s been put in charge of the occupied parts of the region, said 60,000 people would be “evacuated” in six days. --->READ MORE HERE
On a quiet road lined by pine forest leading into the city of Lyman, the remains of a frantic but unsuccessful escape clutter the roadside. Four repurposed civilian cars, burnt-out and upturned, mark the spot where the flight of Russian soldiers met an abrupt end.
Just beside them, the dense green pixel camouflage of charred Russian military uniforms stains the pavement, scattered between personal belongings, toothbrushes, and Moscow metro tickets.
The members of this frantic convoy were fleeing the village of Drobysheve into Lyman, unaware that the latter was already effectively surrounded by the Ukrainian army. Eight Russian soldiers have died here, according to police officers on the ground.
The bodies of those killed on the spot have already been removed from the roadside. Only one member of the party who had crawled into the forest in a hopeless attempt to escape still remained in his final resting place, his hand suspended in the air by rigor mortis.
“He wanted his piece of Ukrainian land,” a police officer on duty at the scene said, “and he’s got it.”
Coming three weeks after Ukraine’s lightning counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast, on Oct. 1, the defeat in Lyman was a major setback for Russia’s withering war aims for numerous reasons.
Firstly, Ukraine’s recapture of Lyman, a city in Donetsk Oblast with a pre-war population of 20,000 that had been occupied by Russia since mid-May, proved once again the capacity of Ukraine’s forces to conduct large-scale combined arms offensives against an entrenched opponent, this time without the element of surprise. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to +++++relevant+++++ and related stories:
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