Attacks Mount as Ukraine and Russia Prepare for Battle of Kherson

Ukrainian forces continue to increase pressure on Russian positions, in an attempt to expel them from the occupied city of Kherson, in the south of the country.

This Friday, October 21, the local army said it had targeted resupply routes across the Dnieper River, as kyiv inched closer to a full-scale attack to retake the strategic port city.

Moscow, meanwhile, is rushing to complete what it calls “evacuations” of civilians from that region to Russian territory. An operation in which he hopes to remove between 50,000 and 60,000 people.

However, the local authorities denounce that these are forced transfers.

Up to 2,000 Russian conscripts have arrived in the Kherson region “to replenish losses and strengthen units on the front line,” the Ukrainian Army General Staff reported.

Amid kyiv’s counteroffensive, the Antonivskyi Bridge, which is on a main route from Crimea to the territories controlled by Kremlin soldiers in southern Ukraine, was hit on Thursday night, the command spokeswoman said. operative from southern Ukraine, Natalia Humeniuk.

Russia accuses Ukraine of ‘killing’ four civilians in missile attack

In the course of these operations, the Kremlin accused the Ukrainian Army of “killing” at least four people and injuring 13 other citizens, in a missile assault, while trying to leave Kherson. An indication that was quickly rejected by the military seeking to recover their territories.

“We do not attack civilians or settlements,” said Humeniuk, who acknowledged an assault, but said it occurred after 10:00 pm, when a local curfew is in place, in order to avoid civilian casualties.

Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Moscow-imposed regional administration, confirmed the kyiv version, noting that the attack occurred about 40 minutes after the start of the curfew.

However, he reiterated that the victims would be civilians. Stremousov said that among the dead and wounded are journalists from the Russian-created television channel ‘Tamvria’.

At least 15,000 residents of the up to 60,000 Russia hopes to remove from the region have already been relocated, Russian troops say.

The homonymous city of Kherson, with a population of around 284,000 people before the war, was one of the first urban areas that Russia captured when it launched the invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

It remains the largest city controlled by the Russians. It is a prime target for both sides of the conflict due to its key industries and important river port.

But Ukraine is trying to expand its military offensive beyond Kherson to recover other territories seized by Moscow, mainly Donetsk and Lugansk, in the east, and Zaporizhia, in the south, the other three regions annexed last September by the Administration of Vladimir Putin and that are not entirely under Russian control.

In addition, the West denounces that the plebiscites there were carried out under the coercion of its inhabitants, for which it marks them as “illegal”.

In the Donetsk region, two people have been killed in the past 24 hours after Russian forces shelled the town of Bakhmut, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.

Russian troops have been unable to advance on the city for more than a month in the face of Ukrainian defenses.

Meanwhile, the deployment of Russian aircraft and military to Belarusian airbases raises the specter of another front on Ukraine’s northern border.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Army reported that there is a strong possibility that such an attack is aimed at cutting off the supply routes of weapons and equipment that the West provides to kyiv.

The Russian troop buildup on Belarusian territory could also be aimed at diverting Ukrainian resources north to weaken any counteroffensive in the south.

Zelensky Says Russia Plans To Destroy Kherson Hydroelectric Plant; Moscow denies it

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused the Russian military of planning to destroy a hydroelectric dam in Kherson to flood parts of the region where Kremlin troops are under pressure from Ukrainian advances.

The president denounced that Moscow planted mines in the Nova Kakhovka dam, in the occupied region, which represents a threat to a 400-kilometer long network of canals built in the Soviet era.

The Ukrainian head of state stated that any attack on that place is similar to the use of weapons of mass destruction.

“If the dam is destroyed, the North Crimean canal will simply disappear” and this would be “a large-scale catastrophe (…) With this terrorist attack, they can destroy, among other things, even the possibility of supplying water from the Dnipro River to Crimea. In case the Kakhovka HPP dam is destroyed, the North Crimean canal will simply disappear,” the president explained.

The Russian-installed leader in the Ukrainian region responded that Kyiv’s accusations that his nation has started exploiting the dam are “false.”

With Reuters and AP