Calls by a Russian-appointed official in Jerson for residents of this occupied region in southern Ukraine to flee the advance of Ukrainian troops amounts to a “deportation” to Russian territory, a Ukrainian regional official said yesterday.
Vladimir Saldo, who was appointed head of the region by Moscow after Russian forces seized it early in the war, publicly appealed Thursday for the Russian government’s help in removing civilians. Saldo made the appeal for him following the advances of Ukrainian forces in the south.
“We understand that there can be no evacuation, this is nothing more than the deportation that Saldo asks for,” Serhiy Jlan, a member of the Kherson regional council, replied at a briefing. “This evacuation announced by Saldo is an evacuation of collaborators and traitors in the region… They want to bring these collaborators to Russia,” Jlan said.
Most of the Kherson region was occupied in the first days of Russia’s invasion when it sent troops from neighboring Crimea. It is one of four partially occupied Ukrainian regions that Russia claimed as its own last month in an annexation overwhelmingly condemned by the United Nations General Assembly.
“The occupants understand that they will not be able to hold out for long, especially on the right bank – of the Dnieper River – and in the city of Kherson,” Jlan said. The Ukrainian offensive in the south is expected in the next few days and its preparations have already begun.
