Russia Says Ukrainian Saboteurs Killed in Kherson Amid Counteroffensive

Ukrainian saboteurs were reportedly "destroyed" Tuesday morning in the Tavrichesky microdistrict of Kherson, according to a Russian military leader.

Kherson has become the latest focal point of the Russia-Ukraine war as Ukraine has amped up pressure to reclaim the southern city with a counteroffensive that has included gunfire, shelling and explosions. Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych described his country's efforts as a "slow operation to grind the enemy."

CNN has reported that Ukrainians have successfully seized four villages near Kherson that Russia had occupied since the war's inception. Ukraine's Operational Command South said Monday that armed forces launched an offensive "in many directions in the south of Ukraine" that has focused on supply chains, successfully hitting multiple Russian targets.

Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Russian military-civilian administration of the region, told Russian state news agency TASS that all members of Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups in Kherson that "do not surrender themselves are liquidated."

"There was activation on Tavrichesky," he told TASS, according to an English translation. "But everything is normal there, everything is under control."

Stremousov has made headlines himself for reportedly not being anywhere in the vicinity of the combat in Kherson. Ukrainian activist, vlogger and volunteer Serhii Sternenko has tweeted repeatedly, showing photos of Stremousov allegedly some 550 miles away in the southwestern Russian city of Voronezh.

One tweet purportedly showed Stremousov delivering a video address with Russia's Annunciation Cathedral, located in Voronezh, visible in the background.

In March, shortly after Russia occupied Kherson, Stremousov was appointed by Russian forces as the region's leader. He has since announced plans like phasing out Ukraine's currency, the hryvnia, for the Russian ruble, and holding a referendum as part of a process that may pave the way for the region to join Russia.

In an August 29 address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed that his country's forces "will drive [Russian troops] to the border" and recommended that they flee "if they want to survive."

"Ukraine is returning its own," Zelensky said, according to a translation. "And it will return Kharkiv Oblast, Luhansk Oblast, Donetsk Oblast, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson Oblast, Crimea, without fail—our entire water area of ​​the Black and Azov Seas—from Zmiyny to the Kerch Strait. It will. This is ours. And just as our society understands it, I want the occupiers to understand it too. There will be no place for them on Ukrainian soil."

Russia has seemingly geared up aggression of its own, using one of its warships to reportedly redeploy artillery from Syria to the Black Sea in anticipation of long-term combat in the region.

Peter Rutland, professor of Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at Wesleyan University, told Newsweek that reoccupying the region on the Dnieper River's west bank "would be a major psychological and political win for Kyiv."

Newsweek reached out to Ukraine and Russia's defense ministries for comment.