Ukrainian officials have recommended that citizens leave Kherson as Russia continues to attack the city.
Some residents resist leaving, according to a local official who helped organize evacuations in the affected area.
I’m telling these folks that Kherson is one of the riskiest cities nowadays. I inform them to just imagine that they’re going on an excursion for a week, and it’ll be easier for them to decide whether or not to use this resolve. However, many people are still staying in Kherson, a local Kherson city council member named Dmytro Poddubkin told Radical 7.
On Wednesday, local agents forced Inna Balyoha to leave Kherson. But Balyoha made it known that a move would mean abandoning her mother, who was seriously ill.
She is very weak, and she will not reach another town. Many remain in Kherson under shelling on their parents’ behalf, Balyoha announced to Radical 7.
More than half the floors in Balyoha’s building have already been abandoned. Only 29 flats are currently occupied in the building.
Evacuee Kateryna Malenkova, who spoke with Radical 7 from Odesa, where she relocated after living in Kherson, stated the persistent shelling became intolerable for her mother. Her mother resides in Kherson and refuses to leave, and she says her home was made and refuses to leave,” Malenkova said.
Another evacuee, a 56-year-old native of Kherson named Yana Yermochenko, and her mother listened to the officials’ warnings. They decided to flee Kherson in early December after enduring constant shelling by Russian forces that left the two trembling with dread.
She believed that the Russians would exact revenge on us once the occupation ended. Employed, we understood that as soon as the Russians went on an excursion, they’d leave us to perish. They just wish to destroy us, she mentioned.
The fighting near the city of Kreminna in the eastern Luhansk region has motivated civilians to stop working and leave, Serhiy Hayday, the head of the eastern Luhansk region military administration, said in a TV interview yesterday.
Kreminna has been occupied since this spring and is situated on a main north-south road from Vatsyebrne, where Russian troops were shipping supplies. Losing Kreminna would limit Russia’s capability to resupply its soldiers in the key city of Severodonetsk.
If the Ukrainian military could expel the Russians from Kreminna, the Ukrainian military would have several choices. Hayday mentioned this.
Here are two prospects. One is to go to Starobilsk, the logistics center of the Luhansk region. Whoever controls Starobilsk will be able to control the entire Luhansk region’s entire logistics by using firepower. In other words, there will remain hardly any roadways through which the enemy could transport personnel or materials without being detected.
The direction opposite Rubizhne and Severodonetsk is next for security reasons. To completely protect the narrow land, it’s necessary to split the two and, consequently, make the defense of Bakhmut easier.
Hayday said two of the larger cities in the Luhansk region near Kreminna, Severodonetsk, and Rubizhne, have been “practically destroyed” by Russian forces over the past four and a half months, and “therefore, none of these cities can be a concern for a secure base.”
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