On Thursday, Russia said it would help people leave Kherson province in southern Ukraine, a move that comes as Ukraine is retaking territory in the region and Moscow continues to bombard the country.
Marat Khusnullin, Russia’s deputy prime minister, said on state television: “The government has decided to organize support for displaced residents” in the region.
The announcement comes after a plea from the regional leader appointed by Russia for Russia to assist in the resettlement of the people. The statement by leader Volodymyr Saldo appeared to be the time to deflect attention from Russian forces, who, since Monday, have killed more than three dozen Ukrainians in an attack. series of missile attacks on towns and cities.
Mr. Saldo, who is considered a traitor by the Kyiv government, said that due to the attacks by Ukrainian forces, people should go to the Crimean Peninsula, which has been controlled by Russian forces since 2014, or to Russia itself.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, said in a Telegram post that Saldo’s appeal was proof of panic.
Since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, thousands of people have been detained and deported to Russia from areas it controls, according to US intelligence assessments. That process is called filter. Thousands of civilians have also fled Kherson in recent weeks and entered Ukrainian-controlled territory, often heading first to the city of Zaporizhzhia, in the northeastern province of Kherson.
Russian forces have launched a series of attacks on civilians. In the deadliest example, at least 30 people were killed on September 30 in a missile attack on a convoy leave Zaporizhzhia. Russia says it does not attack civilians and accuses Ukraine of attacking civilian targets in areas it controls.
Kherson is one of the four provinces of Ukraine President Vladimir V. Putin said last week was annexed to Russia. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine as well as governments around the world consider the merger to be illegal. Mr. Saldo said that Ukraine’s missile attacks were retaliation for the annexation.
Russia appointed Saldo in the spring after its forces took over Kherson, a province in the northern part of the Crimean Peninsula bisected by the Dnipro River. In late August, Ukraine said it was waging a counter-offensive to regain land in the south, and Ukrainian authorities recently reported that they had regained hundreds of square miles of territory in Kherson, as well as a series of villages.
The counterattack repelled Russian forces in several places and also put pressure on the thousands of troops Moscow stationed in the city of Kherson, located on the west bank of the river. Ukraine cut four bridges near the city and also pinpointed Russian military infrastructure in the province using Western-supplied artillery.
Mr. Saldo said the evacuation, which was initially organized by local authorities, applies to people living on either side of the river.
“We, the inhabitants of the Kherson region, know that Russia has not abandoned its own people, and that Russia stands by its side in difficult places,” he said.
