Civilians have been told 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.
Elsewhere, the new Russian commander in Ukraine has given a rare acknowledgement of Vladimir Putin's troops being under pressure amid a sustained Ukrainian counteroffensive.
"The situation in the area of the 'Special Military Operation' can be described as tense," Sergei Surovikin, the Russian air force general now commanding Moscow’s invasion forces, told state-owned Rossiya 24.
