Russian forces under pressure in south Ukraine

A Kremlin-installed official in the south Ukraine region of Kherson urged residents to remain calm Tuesday as reports were surfacing that Kyiv’s forces were making sweeping gains into Russian-controlled territory.

Moscow this month called up hundreds of thousands of troops to bolster the military in eastern Ukraine where Kyiv’s forces have recently made lightning advances and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu meanwhile put the number at 200,000 as of Tuesday.

Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson was one of the first where Kyiv’s defences collapsed in February after Russian forces invaded but Ukrainian forces recently have accelerated a months-long offensive to recapture it.

“Our artillery and fighter jets are hitting enemy forces that enter the sovereign territory of Russia,” said Kirill Stremousov, the Moscow-appointed deputy head of the Kherson region.

“There is no reason to panic,” he added in his message to residents of the Black Sea region on social media.

The reported gains into Kherson are a threat to the Kremlin’s claim to have formally integrated the agriculturally rich region with a pre-war population of around one million people into the Russian Federation last week. According to Russian news agencies and unconfirmed social media reports, unidentified forces have attacked occupying Russian units and officials, while Ukrainian forces have destroyed river bridges, leaving Russian units vulnerable to being trapped.

Some 80 percent of the region is estimated to be under Russian control.

“Yes, you can hear explosions at a distance, but they’re infrequent,” Stremousov said in his message.

He called on Kherson’s residents to remain calm after his superior, Vladimir Saldo, conceded in an interview that Ukrainian forces had made a “breakthrough” in the region’s north east, at the village of Dudchany along the Dniepr river.

But he claimed the push was short-lived and that Russian forces had pushed back again the advancing Ukrainian forces.