Russian evacuation of residents from Kherson is a ‘deportation’, claims Ukraine

Serhiy Khlan, from Kherson’s regional council, says it is only an evacuation for those who have ‘collaborated’ with Russia.

Ukraine has claimed a plea by Moscow-backed separatists for residents of occupied Kherson to evacuate to Russia is, in reality, a call for a mass “deportation”.

Serhiy Khlan, a member of Kherson’s regional council, said it was, in fact, only an evacuation for those who have “collaborated” with Russia.

Residents are being forced to flee to Russia as fighting rages in the regions, say officials, and he urged anyone leaving Kherson, southern Ukraine, to go to territory held by Kyiv’s forces.

In many cases the only evacuation routes residents of the occupied areas can or are allowed to take are into Russian-held areas. Russia has claimed any Ukrainians moving to Russian-held territories are doing so voluntarily.

Moscow has promised free accommodation to fleeing residents, in an apparent sign that Ukraine’s military has made further advances in the region.

The Moscow-installed leader of Kherson, one of four regions illegally annexed by Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, asked the Kremlin earlier this week to organise an evacuation from four cities, because of incessant shelling by Ukrainian forces.

Vladimir Saldo said a decision was made to evacuate Kherson residents to the Russian regions of Rostov, Krasnodar and Stavropol, as well as to the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

“We, residents of the Kherson region, of course know that Russia doesn’t abandon their own, and Russia always offers a hand,” Saldo said Thursday.

News of the evacuations comes amid a large number of reports that many Ukrainians have been forcibly deported to “filtration camps” and held under harsh conditions. Moscow is also accused of deporting thousands of Ukrainian children to be raised in Russia.

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Ukrainian forces have pushed deeper into the Kherson region in recent days.

They claim to have re-taken 75 settlements in the region in the last month.

Putin illegally annexed Kherson, as well as the neighboring Zaporizhzhia region and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine last month following “referendums” in the four regions that Kyiv and the West denounced as a sham.

General Valeriy Zaluzhny, the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, vowed Friday that his forces would succeed in “getting ours back”.