Evacuate ‘immediately’, Kherson civilians told

The call came as President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched 36 rockets overnight in a ‘massive attack’ on Ukraine.

A woman thanks an army medical team visiting an area liberated from Russian occupation. Picture: Getty Images

Pro-Russian authorities on Saturday urged residents in the southern Kherson region, which Moscow claims to have annexed, to leave the main city “immediately” in the face of Kyiv’s advancing counter-­offensive.

The call came as President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched 36 rockets overnight in a “massive attack” on Ukraine, following reported strikes on energy infrastructure that resulted in power outages across the country.

Kyiv’s forces have been advancing along the west bank of the Dnipro river, towards the Kherson region’s eponymous main city. Kherson was the first major city to fall to Moscow’s troops, and retaking it would be a major prize in Ukraine’s counter-offensive.

In recent days, Russia has been moving residents in the ­region, which Moscow claims to have annexed in September, east to Russia in efforts Kyiv has denounced as “deportations”.

“Due to the tense situation on the front, the increased danger of mass shelling of the city and the threat of terrorist attacks, all ­civilians must immediately leave the city and cross to the left bank” of the Dnipro river, the ­region’s pro-Russian authorities announced on social media.

A Moscow-installed official in Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, told Interfax on Saturday that about 25,000 people had made the crossing.

Sergiy Khlan, the Ukrainian deputy head of the Kherson region, said Russians were removing property and documents from banks and the passport office as they withdrew.

Ukraine’s general staff said Moscow’s forces had abandoned two more settlements in Kherson and were evacuating medical personnel from a third, accusing them of looting.

Mr Kishida denounced Moscow’s comments regarding the possible use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida became the latest world leader to reproach Moscow for its talk of using nuclear weapons. “Russia’s act of threatening the use of nuclear weapons is a serious threat to the peace and security of the international community and absolutely unacceptable,” he said.

The 77-year period of no nuclear weapons use “must not be ended”, said Mr Kishida in Perth.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Mr Putin has made several thinly veiled threats about his willingness to deploy tactical nuclear weapons.

AFP