Russia Prepares to Surrender Kherson – The Moscow Times Russian Service

After two months of attempts to resist the advancing Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Russian army is preparing to leave Kherson – one of the largest cities in the Ukrainian south, which was under Russian control from the very first weeks of the war and where a referendum on joining the Russian Federation was held at the end of September.

The situation around Kherson is “difficult,” General of the Army Sergei Surovikin, commander of the Russian troops in Ukraine, said in his first public interview.

In July and August, the Armed Forces of Ukraine destroyed the bridges across the Dnieper, which supplied the group in Kherson, and last week hit the Crimean Bridge, the last “road of life” through which ammunition was transported through the peninsula to the city.

In connection with the situation in Kherson, “we will act consciously, not excluding the possibility of making difficult decisions,” Surovikin said on Tuesday.

At the end of last week, according to the State Headquarters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, officials of the occupation administration, as well as the property of banks and the pension fund, began to be evacuated from the city.

On Tuesday, the head of the region Vladimir Saldo announced about the beginning of the “organized movement” of civilians against the background of the offensive of the Ukrainian military. Evacuation to the left bank of the Dnieper has been announced for residents of Berislav, Belozersky, Snigirevsky and Aleksandrovsky municipalities.

“The Ukrainian side is building up forces for a large-scale offensive. The Russian Federation has formed a military group to repel this offensive. The battlefield of this confrontation can be our land, peaceful cities and villages of the Kherson region,” Saldo said in a video message.

According to him, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are planning to destroy the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station and dump water from the cascade of power plants upstream of the Dnieper, thereby flooding the territory.

People collaborating with the occupying authorities have already begun to be evacuated from the Berislavsky district of the Kherson region, the head of the local military administration Vladimir Litvinov told Suspilna. According to him, in the city, which is located on the right bank of the Dnieper, about 80 kilometers from Kherson, there are now a lot of Russian military and equipment.

According to British intelligence, the Russian army has been preparing since last week for Ukrainian forces to enter Kherson, which, as of October 7, were less than 30 km from the city.

And while the front is cracking at the seams, President Vladimir Putin’s thinking is stuck: having announced a mobilization, Russia’s first since 1941, he still dreams of taking over most of Ukraine, officials and sources close to the Kremlin told Bloomberg.

According to them, some people close to the Kremlin believe that Russia can still regain the initiative on the battlefield, push deep into Ukraine and even capture several major cities. Among them are Kharkov, abandoned by the army in May, and Odessa, which the troops never managed to reach.