Ukrainian officials have urged people in occupied parts of the Kherson region to reject an offer of evacuation to Russia and instead to wait for liberation, as a United Nations envoy said Moscow’s troops were using rape as part of the “military strategy” of their invasion.
Russian president Vladimir Putin said the mobilisation of 300,000 of his compatriots to fight in Ukraine would end within a fortnight and cast doubt, along with other Moscow officials, on whether the Kremlin would extend a deal next month to allow grain shipments to leave Ukrainian ports.
Russian provinces bordering Ukraine said they expected the arrival of people from Kherson after occupation officials urged families to leave the area amid intensifying Ukrainian missile fire, and following the Kremlin’s recent claim to sovereignty over the Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzia regions of Ukraine.
“The armed forces of Ukraine strike with high-precision weapons only at places where Russian soldiers or their equipment are concentrated. And such ... statements by collaborators prove once more that the armed forces of Ukraine are already near,” said Oleksandr Samoilenko, the head of Kherson regional council.
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“Do not go to the Russian Federation under any pretext ... because when you leave your homeland, you will immediately be given Russian passports. And under their legislation it will be practically impossible to return to Ukraine,” he added, claiming that Moscow planned to “move Russians from remote areas into your homes and apartments”.
Kherson regional deputy Serhii Khlan said Moscow’s inability to halt Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the province — during which it claims to have retaken more than 1,000 sq km of land and some 75 settlements — had prompted the launch of what he called an “evacuation of collaborators and traitors” to Russia.
Kremlin appointees in Kherson insist they are not preparing for a full evacuation and that Kyiv’s counterattack will fail, but Russian troops in the region are increasingly isolated after Ukraine used powerful and precise western artillery to destroy their arms and fuel depots, command posts and key bridges in the area.
Ukraine accuses Russia of committing war crimes and other atrocities in areas close to Kyiv and in eastern Ukraine that its troops temporarily occupied during their full-scale invasion, which has killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians and displaced millions.
“When women are held for days and raped, when you start to rape little boys and men, when you see a series of genital mutilations, when you hear women testify about Russian soldiers equipped with Viagra, it’s clearly a military strategy,” said Pramila Patten, the UN special representative on sexual violence.
“And when the victims report what was said during the rapes, it is clearly a deliberate tactic to dehumanise the victims,” she told the AFP news agency.
Ms Patten said that “according to gathered testimonies, the age of the victims of sexual violence ranges from four to 82 years old ... There are many cases of sexual violence against children who are raped, tortured and kept hostage.”
Russia denies such allegations, and Mr Putin insisted on Friday that his country was “acting correctly and in a timely manner” in Ukraine to defend its interests.
He said 222,000 of a planned 300,000 reservists had now been drafted into the Russian army, and that conscription that prompted hundreds of thousands of men to flee the country would be completed “within two weeks”.
Mr Putin also warned that he might not support the extension of a deal next month to lift a blockade of Ukrainian ports if Moscow found evidence that explosives used to blow up part of a bridge linking Russia to occupied Crimea were shipped from Odesa on a cargo ship. Other Moscow officials have complained that part of the agreement to smooth delivery of Russian grain and fertiliser exports to world markets is not being implemented.
