Ukraine on Wednesday accused Russia of preparing a “mass deportation” of people from the newly annexed territories, where the evacuation of civilians from Kherson began and where Vladimir Putin declared martial law, a sign that it is now in an “unbelievably difficult situation”. According to Joe Biden.
At the same time, Russian bombing continued in northern Ukraine, including kyiv, in the east and center, but also in the west, an area generally freer from fighting.
“The enemy carried out four missile strikes, eleven air strikes and more than 100 strikes with multiple rocket launchers,” the general staff of the Ukrainian forces summed up in the evening.
Air defense batteries shot down “several Russian missiles” over the Ukrainian capital, said its mayor, Vitaly Klitschko. Since Monday, Kyiv has been attacked several times by Russian suicide drones that have targeted energy infrastructure in particular.
Further north, another Iranian-made drone exploded in Chernigiv, the Ukrainians said, with three injured hospitalized.
Up to 60,000 people in a few days
In southern Ukraine, the Russian administration of the Kherson region said on Wednesday that civilian evacuations had begun. He plans to move “50,000 to 60,000” in a few days to the other bank of the Dnieper.
The city of Kherson, occupied since the spring, will also be evacuated, in the face of advancing Ukrainian troops, said the head of the pro-Russian municipal authorities Vladimir Saldo, promising that the Russian soldiers will resist “until death”.
Gen. Sergey Surovikin, recently appointed head of Russian operations in Ukraine, admitted on Tuesday that the situation there was “very difficult.”
“A Crime That Must Be Condemned”
But for the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, we are rather witnessing “the preparation of the mass deportation of the Ukrainian population” to Russia “in order to modify the ethnic composition of the occupied territories.”
“A crime that should be condemned by the United Nations and that has already been committed in Crimea”, unilaterally attached to Russia in 2014, he added.
In total, “some five million inhabitants” of the four Ukrainian regions annexed in September by Moscow are currently on Russian soil, where they have taken “refuge”, said the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev.
These are those of Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporijjia in which the Russian president ordered the establishment of martial law on Wednesday, a “null and void” measure, Ukrainian diplomacy reacted.
Source: BFM TV
