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| Russia Reveals Troops Digging Trenches for All-Out War in Kherson |
Moscow - Russian troops are digging trenches for the "toughest battle" in the strategic southern region of Kherson. A senior Ukrainian official made the remarks as the Kremlin prepares to defend the largest city under its control from Kiev's retaliatory attacks.
Russian troops in the region have been driven back in recent weeks and risk being trapped on the west bank of the Dnipro river, where the provincial capital Kherson has been in Russian hands since the early days of the invasion of Ukraine eight months ago. Russian-deployed authorities are evacuating residents to the east bank.
However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, said there was no sign of Russian troops preparing to leave the city. "With Kherson everything is clear. Russia is filling in, strengthening their grouping there," Arestovych said in an online video on Tuesday night. “It means that no one is preparing to back down. On the contrary, the toughest battle will be for Kherson."
Read Also: Breaking News, Russian and Ukrainian Troops Prepare for the Great Battle of Kherson
Of the four provinces that Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed in September, Kherson is arguably the most strategically important. The territory controls the only land route to the Crimean peninsula that Russia seized in 2014 and is the mouth of the Dnipro, the major river that divides Ukraine.
Yuri Sobolevsky, a member of the ousted pro-Ukrainian Kherson regional council, said the Russian-formed authorities were putting increasing pressure on Kherson residents to evacuate. "Search and filtering procedures are intensifying like car and house searches," he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
In the Mykolaiv region north and west of the city of Kherson, artillery duels raged throughout Tuesday (10/25/2022), according to a frontline post on Rybar, the pro-Russian channel on Telegram. "In the northern Ishchenka district of Kherson, Ukrainian troops tried to consolidate their positions, but were forced to return to their previous lines," the military post said. It said the Ukrainian military was preparing to advance along the front lines.
A Reuters reporter in a remote hamlet near the Kherson frontline said residents hoped Russian troops would withdraw soon. "You fall asleep at night and you don't know if you will wake up," said Mikola Nizinets, 39, referring to the Russian shooting. With no electricity or gas and little food or drinking water in the area, many residents have fled, leaving livestock roaming among the ammunition.
Russia told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that Ukraine was preparing to use a "dirty bomb". The accusations were dismissed by Western and Ukrainian officials as a false pretext to intensify the war. Russia's Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Dmitry Polyanskiy said evidence had been shared with Western colleagues. "I don't mind people saying that Russia weeps for wolves if this doesn't happen because this is a terrible catastrophe that has the potential to threaten the entire Earth," he told reporters.
President Zelenskyy said Russia's accusations showed Moscow was planning to use tactical nuclear weapons and would try to blame Kiev. US President Joe Biden said Russia would "make a very serious mistake" if it used tactical nuclear weapons. Biden then spoke by phone with the new British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and they agreed on the importance of supporting Ukraine, according to the White House.
In an apparent response to Moscow's accusations, the UN nuclear watchdog said it was preparing to send inspectors to two unidentified Ukrainian sites at Kiev's request. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said inspectors would receive full access. He asked Moscow to show the same transparency. Russia's state news agency RIA identified the two sites involved as the Eastern Mineral Enrichment Plant in the central Dnipropetrovsk region and the Nuclear Research Institute in Kiev.
Since Russian troops suffered heavy losses in September, Putin has multiplied, summoning hundreds of thousands of reservists, declaring annexation of occupied territory and repeatedly threatening to use nuclear weapons.