A new speech. At a short ceremony held in Moscow’s Red Square to celebrate Russian National Unity Day, Vladimir Putin said on Friday that civilians in Kherson, in occupied southern Ukraine , “must be removed” from the “most dangerous” combat zones.
“The civilian population should not suffer from the bombardments resulting from offensive, counter-offensive and other measures”, he added during an exchange in particular with Russian volunteers engaged in the region of Kherson, Ukrainian territory for which Moscow claims annexation since the end of September.
The Russian occupation authorities in Kherson announced on Tuesday that they had begun the displacement of “up to 70,000 people”, who are currently on the left bank of the Dnieper River. The army affirms, in detail, that “more than 5,000” civilians have been evacuated “every day” since the beginning of the week. “Military engineers transport up to 1,200 civilian vehicles, trucks and cars daily,” the Russian Defense Ministry added on Telegram.
Last week, the Russian occupation forces had already indicated that 70,000 civilians had left their homes located to the west on the right bank of the river and closer to the front line.
“Volunteers continue to arrive”
To stem the Ukrainian dynamic on the ground, Vladimir Putin announced on September 21 the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists to support the Russian army. “We already have 318,000 (mobilised). Why 318,000? Because volunteers keep coming. The number of volunteers is not decreasing”, welcomed the Russian president, whose Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, had given on October 28 the figure of 300,000 mobilized.
According to the Russian president, 49,000 of them are already deployed in military units fighting in Ukraine.
About Mariupol, a large port in south-eastern Ukraine that the Russian army conquered in the spring after a siege of several months, Vladimir Putin affirmed this Friday that it was “a very old Russian city” and indicated want to start major reconstruction work.
Earlier in the day, the Russian president laid a wreath at the foot of the monument in tribute to Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky, two figures in Russian history who helped liberate Moscow from Polish occupation in the early of the 17th century. Russian National Unity Day, not worked in Russia, commemorates this popular revolt against Polish-Lithuanian forces in 1612.