The Ukrainian authorities have in recent hours disseminated information about alleged advances on the Kherson front in southern Ukraine, at a time when Russia, which has already completed the evacuation of the regional capital, is reluctant to acknowledge defeats on the military front.
The deputy chairman of the Kherson Regional Council, Yuri Sobolevsky, has posted on his Telegram account an image of the provincial administration building to show that it no longer flies the Russian flag. «Kherson was, is and will be Ukrainian,» he has proclaimed.
The Ukrainian authorities do not quite trust the Russian withdrawal either, as recognized by a spokeswoman for the Armed Forces, Natakia Humeniuk, who does not rule out that it could be some «trick», so that there is some kind of «provocation» to accuse Kiev of attacking the civilian population, according to the UNIAN agency.
Russia, for its part, has organized in the last weeks a massive evacuation of Kherson, in which tens of thousands of people would have crossed to the left bank of the Dnieper river, where the pro-Russian administration which during these months has controlled the area, has also moved.
Moscow has concluded this work and confirmed the closure of river traffic on the Dnieper, with few exceptions. It denies that this is a withdrawal and claims instead that it wants to protect the population against an offensive which it anticipated to be indiscriminate on the part of the Ukrainian forces.
The pro-Russian deputy governor, Kiril Stremousov, also assured Thursday that «all attacks» have been repelled, according to an interview picked up by the TASS news agency. «We did not observe a massive and rapid offensive or a large build-up of Nazi troops,» he alleged, alluding to the Ukrainian ones.
Kherson is one of four Ukrainian regions that Russia now claims as its own, along with Zaporiyia, Donetsk and Lugansk. Referendums were held in all of them, the legitimacy of which has not been recognized by Kiev and all its Western allies.
