The message was delivered by the Kremlin-appointed Kherson governor Kyrylo Stremousov, the Ukrainska Pravda website reported in the early hours of Wednesday.
Writing on the social messaging app Telegram on Tuesday night, Stremousov said that Ukrainian troops would advance on Kherson City “in the near future,” and would likely to attack the city as well as the part of the Kherson region on the right bank of the Dnieper river, according to Ukrainska Pravda.
The Russian-appointed governor urged residents to flee, pledging that Russia would “compensate them for the possible loss of housing,” and vowed that the Russian-installed Kherson officials "will stand to the end," Ukrainska Pravda reported.
The website added that, according to Western military officials, Ukrainian troops can liberate Kherson “as early as late October.”
Iranian drone trainers arrive in Crimea to aid Russian army: ISW
Meanwhile, members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “are in Russian-occupied Crimea to train Russian forces on how to use the Iranian drones they purchased,” the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on Tuesday, citing a report by the New York Times.
Current and former US officials confirmed to the NYT on October 18 that Iranian drone trainers were in Crimea, although it remained unclear whether they were “flying the drones themselves, or merely teaching Russian forces how to do so,” the ISW said.
The US think tank stressed that by providing assistance, the Iranian drone trainers were “thereby enabling likely Russian war crimes.”
The ISW reported that Russian forces have directed “dozens of Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones against civilian targets in Ukraine since mid-September, prioritizing creating psychological terror effects on Ukrainian civilians rather than achieving tangible battlefield effects.”
Call-up causes social fractures in Russian society
In its latest assessment of the war in Ukraine, the Washington-based think tank also reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “unequal implementation of partial mobilisation is causing social fractures that are driving the Russian information space to further marginalise ethnic minority communities.”
According to the ISW, the Kremlin continues its policy of “using poor and minority communities to bear the brunt of force generation efforts while protecting ethnic Russians and wealthier Russian citizens.”
Russia targets Ukraine’s critical infrastructure
Meanwhile, Russian forces continued to target critical Ukrainian civilian infrastructure with air, missile, and drone strikes, news outlets reported.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on Tuesday that Russian strikes had destroyed 30 percent of his country's power stations since October 10, the ISW noted. It said Russia's "likely attempt to demoralize Ukrainian civilians" was “unlikely to succeed.”
The Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) claimed that Russian forces continued to strike Ukrainian infrastructure and military command facilities, according to the US think tank.
Kryvyi Rih, Nikopol, Enerhodar
In the early hours of Wednesday, Russian forces struck an energy infrastructure facility near the central city of Kryvyi Rih, in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
The attack left many nearby settlements and the Inhulets neighbourhood of Kryvyi Rih without electricity, Ukrainska Pravda reported, citing local officials.
Pumping stations of local water utilities have also been left without power and "there are disruptions in water supply,” authorities said, as quoted by Ukrainska Pravda.
Russian troops also shelled the Nikopol district, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, “with Grads, Uragans and heavy artillery” all night, damaging residential buildings, according to local administration officials, Ukrainska Pravda said.
There was also an attack on the southeastern city Enerhodar near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, resulting in power outages and shutdown of the water supply system in some areas, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Wednesday is day 238 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, understandingwar.org, ukrinform.net, pravda.com.ua