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On Saturday, pro-Russian authorities urged residents of the southern region of Kherson, which Moscow claims to have annexed, to leave the main city “immediately” in the face of a counteroffensive advancing from Kyiv.
Earlier, Russian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia launched a “massive attack” on Ukraine with 36 rockets overnight, after reports of an attack on energy infrastructure that caused a nationwide blackout.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has become the latest world leader to accuse Moscow of talking about the use of nuclear weapons.
Kyiv’s forces had been advancing along the western bank of the Dnieper towards the main city of the same name in the Kherson region.
Kherson was the first major city to fall into the hands of the Moscow army, and retaking it would be an important prize for the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Russia has been moving residents of the region, which Moscow claims to have annexed in September, eastward to Russia in recent days, a move Kyiv denounced as “deportation”.
“Due to the tension on the front lines, the increased danger of mass shelling of the city and the threat of terrorist attacks, all civilians must leave the city immediately and cross the region’s pro-Russian left bank of the Dnieper,” the authorities announced on social media.
About 25,000 people passed through the crossing, Kirill Stremousov, a Moscow official in Kherson, told Russia’s Interfax news agency on Saturday.
Sergiy Khlan, deputy governor of Ukraine’s Kherson region, said the Russians were taking property and documents from banks and passport offices as they evacuated.
The Ukrainian General Staff said Moscow’s army had abandoned two other settlements in Kherson and was evacuating medical personnel from a third settlement, accusing them of looting local civilians.
a ‘serious threat’
Earlier on Saturday, Japan’s Mr Kishida condemned Moscow’s remarks about the possible use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict.
“Russia’s threat to use nuclear weapons is a serious threat to the peace and security of the international community and is absolutely unacceptable,” he said.
Speaking in Australia, Kishida said the 77 years without the use of nuclear weapons “must never end”.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Putin has made several veiled threats about his willingness to deploy tactical nuclear weapons.
Earlier this month, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned that Russian troops would be “annihilated” if Russia launched such an attack.
Washington also warned Moscow of “catastrophic” consequences if they used such weapons.
Japan is the only country to have ever suffered a nuclear attack: the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killing 140,000 people, and three days later the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing 74,000 people.
‘Fearing for our lives’
At a train station in the northern Crimea town of Dzhankoy, the Crimean peninsula was annexed by Moscow from Ukraine in 2014, Kherson residents were boarding a train bound for southern Russia, AFP reporters saw on Friday.
“We were leaving Kherson because of the heavy shelling that started there and we feared for our lives,” said Valentina Yelkina, a pensioner traveling with her daughter.
Ukrainian Vice President Tymoshenko said on Saturday that more than 1 million households in Ukraine were without power following a Russian attack on energy facilities across the country.
The state operator earlier said new strikes in Russia targeted energy infrastructure in western Ukraine, and officials in several regions of the war-torn country reported power outages as winter approached.
Ukraine’s energy operator Ukrenergo said on social media that the Russians “carried out another missile attack on energy facilities in the main network of western Ukraine”.
“These are malicious attacks on critical objects,” Zelensky said. “The world can and must stop this terror.”
Power outages have been reported in other parts of the country, and local officials have repeatedly called for reduced energy use. According to Ukrenergo, some regions of Ukraine have reduced electricity consumption by 20 percent.
“Ukraine began Saturday with a barrage of Russian missiles targeting vital civilian infrastructure,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba tweeted, again urging allies in Kyiv to speed up the delivery of air defense systems.
At least two civilians were killed in strikes Saturday in Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, according to local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov. He added that nearly 15,000 people were without electricity.
Russia last week reported a “significant increase” in Ukraine’s firing on its territory, saying attacks were concentrated in the Belgorod region and the adjacent Bryansk and Kursk regions.
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