Ukraine Claims Russians Are Evacuating Occupied Areas

Russian-installed authorities have started to evacuate from Ukraine's partially occupied Kherson region, Ukrainian military leaders said on Monday.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine posted on its Facebook page that the authorities appointed by Moscow in Skadovsk in the southern Kherson region had begun to curtail their activities and leave the city.

Kherson became the first major region to fall to Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces after the war began. It had been Russia's biggest military achievement of the conflict, in part due to its strategic location and proximity to Crimea. Kherson is one of four territories that Putin illegally annexed in September 2022 following sham referendums, with the others being Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.

In November 2022, Russian forces retreated from Kherson city. Last November's withdrawal was announced after weeks of advances by Ukrainian forces toward the city, and as Russia moved to evacuate hundreds of thousands of its residents.

Reports of evacuations come ahead of reports of a looming counteroffensive from Ukraine to recapture its occupied regions.

Ukraine's General Staff wrote Monday evening that, on May 6 and May 7, employees of the Russian-appointed administration in Skadovsk loaded documents, office equipment "and other property of state institutions" into cars.

"Along with their families, a large part of the Russian occupation administration left the city," the post read. It added that the situation is largely the same in the nearby settlements.

Shortly later, Lyudmila Khotienko, the head of the Russian-appointed administration of Skadovsk, denied the General Staff's claims that Russian-appointed officials are evacuating from the city.

"I'm in place, my employees are all in place, we continue to work as usual," Khotienko told Russia's state-run news agency Tass.

Newsweek has contacted Ukraine's foreign ministry for comment via email.

Meanwhile, in Zaporizhzhia, which is home to Europe's largest nuclear-power plant, Kremlin-appointed regional official Andrey Kozenko said about 70,000 people are expected to be evacuated.

"So far, we say that children and families with children are high-priority groups," Kozenko told Tass on May 5. "The relocation process has already begun in the Polohy District, with people being relocated to the city of Berdyansk."

Yevgeny Balitsky, the Kremlin-appointed acting head of the regional administration, said Monday that more than 1,600 people, including 660 children, have been evacuated so far.

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