Moscow ‘deliberately’ relocating Ukraine with Russians?Vladimir Putin’s plans | World News

According to the Institute of War Studies (ISW), Russia continues to conduct a “deliberate depopulation campaign” in occupied areas of Ukraine. In its update, ISW said Russia was working to facilitate the resettlement of Russians on Ukrainian territory.

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hannah Malyar said Russia was “trying to change the ethnic makeup of Ukraine” through mass relocation, the U.S. think tank pointed out. People, mainly from poorer and remote regions of Russia, were sent to Ukraine and resettled there, the minister said.

“Russia may wish to import Russians to fill sparsely populated areas of Ukraine in order to further integrate the occupied regions into Russia socially, administratively, politically and economically, thereby complicating the conditions for the reintegration of these territories into Ukraine,” ISW reported.

Earlier, the think tank assessed that Russia’s depopulation and population reconstruction campaign was a “deliberate effort of ethnic cleansing” that may violate the Geneva Conventions.

ISW also noted that Russian officials’ comments “continue to underscore widespread anxiety about a potential Ukrainian counteroffensive.”

The think tank noted that Russia’s information space “has not yet agreed on how to address significant and growing concerns about the near future”.

According to Ukraine’s Interfax news agency, the Ukrainian capital Kiev was blasted across the country due to air raid sirens and explosions.Explosions occurred just after midnight in Dnipro, Kremenchuk and Poltava in central Ukraine and Nikolayev in the south, Interfax reported.