Vladimir Putin has said he is imposing martial law on the four regions of Ukraine recently illegally-annexed by Moscow.
The four regions affected will be Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, none of which though are under full Russian control, and whose annexation has not be recognised by the West.
Meanwhile civilians have been told to evacuate the Russian-controlled Ukrainian city of Kherson “as fast as possible” as Ukrainian forces surround the region.
Ukraine’s troops “will shortly begin an offensive against the city of Kherson,” said Kirill Stremousov, the Russian-installed deputy head of the Kherson region, which Russia partially controls.
Russian forces in Kherson have been driven back by 20-30 km in the last few weeks and are at risk of being pinned against the right or western bank of the Dnipro River.
“I ask you to take my words seriously and take them to mean: the fastest possible evacuation,” he said in a late night post on Telegram.
