Ukraine attacks Russia’s hold on southern city of Kherson

The battles came amid reports that Moscow-appointed authorities have abandoned the city, joining tens of thousands of residents who fled to other Russia-held areas.

On Thursday, Ukrainian forces were surrounding Kherson from the west and attacking Russia’s foothold on the west bank of the Dnieper River, which divides the region and the country.

Evacuees from Kherson arrive at the railway station in Anapa, southern Russia, on October 25, 2022. Russian-backed officials say 70,000 people have taken part in the evacuation operation from the city in southern Ukraine. (AP)

“We see no need for that,” Putin said at a conference of international foreign policy experts outside Moscow. “There is no point in that, neither political nor military.”

The Russian leader, who insisted for weeks before the invasion that he did not intend to attack Ukraine, also sought to cast the conflict as part of efforts by the West to secure global domination. He accused the US and its allies of trying to dictate their terms to other nations in a “dangerous and bloody” domination game.

Putin, whose troops invaded on February 24, has described Western support for Ukraine as part of broad efforts by Washington and its allies to enforce what they call a rules-based world order that only foments chaos.

Ukrainian soldiers fire a mortar shell during fighting near Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine. (AP)

Meanwhile, Russia warned that Moscow could target Western commercial satellites used for military purposes in support of Ukraine, and a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman accused the United States of pursuing “thoughtless and mad” escalation.

Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova argued that Washington should take an approach more like it did during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the Cold War superpowers stepped back from the brink of nuclear confrontation.

“The more the US is drawn into supporting the Kyiv regime on the battlefield, the more they risk provoking a direct military confrontation between the biggest nuclear powers fraught with catastrophic consequences,” Zakharova said.

More than 70,000 residents from the Kherson city area have evacuated in recent days, the region’s Kremlin-installed governor, Vladimir Saldo, said on Thursday.

A local resident inspects his car damaged during a Russian attack in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on October 27, 2022. (AP)

Members of the Russia-backed regional administration also fled, the deputy governor, Kirill Stremousov said. Monuments to Russian heroes were moved, along with the remains of Grigory Potemkin, the Russian general who founded Kherson in the 18th century. His remains were kept at the city’s St Catherine’s Church.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described reports of Russian troops’ possible withdrawal from the city as disinformation.

“I don’t see them fleeing from Kherson,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper. “This is an information attack, so that we go there, transfer troops from other dangerous directions there.”

In other news, A senior Ukrainian military officer accused Russia of planning to stage explosions at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and blame them on Ukraine in a false-flag attack.

General Oleksii Gromov, the chief of the main operational department of the Ukrainian military’s general staff, pointed to Moscow’s repeated unfounded allegations that Ukraine was plotting to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb as a possible signal that Moscow was planning explosions at the plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station.

Russia took control of the Zaporizhzhia plant in the opening days of the invasion. Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of attacking the plant, which had its reactors shut down following continuous shelling.