MOSCOW: The new commander of the Russian military in Ukraine admitted for the first time that pressure was being exerted by Ukrainian criminals to retake the southern and eastern regions which Moscow claimed it had captured a few weeks ago. 

In another sign of Russian concern about the situation on the ground eight months after the invasion, the Kremlin-founded chief of the strategic southern region of Kherson on Tuesday announced an "organised, gradual displacement" of civilians from four Dnipro River towns.

The west bank of the 2,200 km (1,367 mi) long Dnipro River, which divides Ukraine, is at risk as Russian forces have been pushed back 20–30 km (13–20 mi) in Kherson in recent weeks. has gone.

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The new commander of the Russian Air Force, Sergei Surovikin, told the state-run Rossiya 24 television news channel that "the situation in the area of ​​'special military operation' can be described as tense."

Surovikin, commenting on Kherson, said: "The area is in a challenging position. In Kherson, the enemy is deliberately hitting both residential buildings and infrastructure.

Although Kyiv has accused Moscow's military of war crimes, both Ukraine and Russia have denied targeting civilians.
On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued an order referred to as a "special military operation" to ensure the safety and security of Russian speakers in Ukraine. Moscow has been accused by Ukraine and its allies of starting a reckless war to seize territory from its pro-Western neighbor.

Surovikin reported frequent attacks on positions of Russian troops in Kupiyansk and Lyman in eastern Ukraine, as well as in the area between Mykolaiv and Krivy Rih in the Kherson province.

He acknowledged that there was a risk of Ukrainian forces moving closer to Kherson, which is difficult for Russia to re-supply from the east because the main bridge of the Dniepro has been severely damaged by Ukrainian bombing and is located close to the mouth. Is. Dnipro on the west coast.

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The city was largely uncontested when Russia seized it in the early stages of the invasion, and it is still the only significant Ukrainian city to have been completely conquered by Moscow's forces.

Perhaps the most strategically important of the four Ukrainian provinces that Russia claims is Kherson. It controls the mouth of the Dnipro River as well as the only land access point to the Crimean peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014.

After holding a referendum in September, Putin announced the annexation of the eastern border provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, an important industrial region known as Donbass, as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine as a sham. claimed in and it was forced.

After serving in Syria and Chechnya, where his forces destroyed cities in a brutal but effective scorched-earth policy against his enemies, Surovikin earned the moniker "General Armageddon" in the Russian media.

On 10 October, shortly after his appointment, the war's largest wave of missile attacks began against Ukraine.
Putin justified the attacks as a return to an explosion that damaged a bridge connecting Russia and Crimea.

The Ukrainian government has not accepted responsibility for the attack, but has welcomed its destruction as a military facility used to transfer troops and weapons.

The Russian-established administrator of the Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, claimed that the prospect of an attack by Ukrainian forces prompted the decision to evacuate some civilians from the four cities.

Saldo said in a video statement that "the Ukrainian side is building up troops for a massive attack." He claimed that Russian forces were getting ready to repel the offensive and that "civilians have no place where the army operates. Let the Russian army fulfill its mission."

In what Ukraine and the West described as a civilian intimidation campaign, Russia continued to launch missiles at infrastructure in the northern region of the capital Kyiv.

Russia destroyed nearly a third of Ukraine's power plants last week, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky. In his video speech on Tuesday night, he claimed that more than ten regions had been targeted by Russia in the past 24 hours and urged the people of Ukraine to use less electricity at night.

Power plants in Kyiv and other cities were hit by missiles, which cut off water supplies and resulted in blackouts.

There is no information about the total number of dead yet. A day earlier, a swarm of Russian drones attacked infrastructure in Kyiv and other cities, killing at least five people.

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According to Ukraine, Iran-made Shaheed-136 "Kamikaze drones", which take off and explode at their targets, are reportedly used by Russia. The Kremlin also denied using them on Tuesday and Iran refused to provide them.

Zelensky criticized Russia for using drones. 
But now, tactically speaking, the terrorists might still hold onto some hopes, plans, and fresh illusions thanks to the use of Iranian drones. As with their prior plans, everything will fail, he predicted in his video address.