Moscow-appointed officials occupying a key city in Ukraine are getting out of dodge and urging residents to evacuate ahead of a feared counter-offensive by Ukrainian troops to retake the southern city of Kherson. Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the local Kremlin-controlled administration, used a video appeal to urge residents in the occupied city to evacuate as Russian forces have been pushed back between 13 and 20 miles in the area over the last few weeks. The Russian-backed governor of the region, Vladimir Saldo, separately announced that the local administration was moving to the left bank of the Dnipro River ahead of an expected Ukrainian counter-offensive. Although the city is on territory which Russian President Vladimir Putin formally annexed into the Russian Federation, neither Ukraine nor its western allies acknowledge the land-grab. “I ask you to take my words seriously and to interpret them as a call to evacuate as fast as you possibly can,” Stremousov said, adding that locals would be accommodated in Russia. Russian state media agency TASS quoted the Kherson region chief saying around 50,000-60,000 people would be evacuated in the next six days.
