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In response to
"Kyiv’s forces press their advance in the south and work to hold off a Russian assault in the east."
by
crash davis
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Moscow adds 1,000 troops to defend the key city of Kherson, Ukraine’s military says.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Moscow continues to add soldiers for the defense of the strategic southern city of Kherson, the Ukrainian military said in a statement on Friday, noting that roughly 1,000 newly mobilized troops have recently arrived.
At the same time, Russian proxy officials in charge of the civilian administration of Kherson are steadily moving operations to the eastern banks of the Dnipro River, where the Russian position is more secure, and increasing pressure on civilians to leave the city.
The two movements — which are shrouded in secrecy and clouded by misinformation — underscore the precarious position tens of thousands of Russian soldiers on the western side of the Dnipro find themselves in despite the Kremlin’s desire to hold their ground at all costs.
Ukraine’s claim could not be independently verified. The British defense ministry said on Friday in an intelligence update that Russia had most likely supplemented its forces on the west bank of the Dnipro with reservists, but noted that this was from a very “low level of manning.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, speaking to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera this week, said that he did not see evidence of Russian forces fleeing Kherson. He said he thinks that they may be trying to lure Ukrainians into advancing too quickly.
“They are not ready to leave Kherson,” he said, adding that the longer it takes Ukrainian forces to drive the Russians out of Kherson, the more dire the conditions will be for the civilians who remain.
“It’s difficult because the price is people,” he said.
It is unclear how many civilians remain in and around Kherson. Russian-installed officials in Kherson in recent days have urged all residents to leave the city, giving conflicting accounts of how many had heeded the call. On Friday, they said that civilian evacuations were complete.
Russia has probably bolstered its troops with “mobilized reservists” west of the Dnipro River, Britain’s defense ministry has said.
The head of Ukraine’s Kherson regional military administration, Yaroslav Yanushevych, told residents not to heed Russian orders to “evacuate,” warning that the Russians planned on using them as “human shields.”
Nearly all routes for civilians to escape to Ukrainian-controlled territory have been blocked by Russian forces.
Located on the west bank of the Dnipro, Kherson is the gateway to both Russian-held Crimea in the south and Ukraine’s Black Sea ports to the west, including Odesa. Its loss would be a severe military and symbolic blow for Mr. Putin, who has rejected requests from his commanders on the ground that they be allowed to retreat from the city.
Brig. Gen. Oleksii Hromov, the deputy head of the army general staff’s main operations directorate, said that even as Russians take steps to defend the city, they are preparing in case they have to quickly abandon their positions west of the Dnipro.
Ukraine continues to hit Russian positions in and around the city while Ukrainian partisans target Russian operations behind enemy lines, with explosions echoing through the city daily.
After a building being used by Russian forces in the city was hit by a rocket on Monday, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, the leader of the Russian republic of Chechnya, vowed revenge.
“I give you my word — we will attack them every day and destroy them every day,” he said. “We will not take these devils prisoner. We’ll burn them.”
On Friday, he acknowledged the deadly toll of the strike. At least 23 Russian soldiers were killed, he said, and more than 50 others were injured.
— Marc Santora
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