According to the pro-Russian occupation authorities, the kyiv regime killed four people while targeting a bridge over the Dnieper River, used to evacuate civilians.
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LPro-Russian authorities in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region on Friday (October 21st) accused Kyiv forces of killing four people by shelling the Antonovskiy Bridge linking the north and south banks of the Dnieper River, used for evacuations. “Four people were killed,” said Kirill Stremoussov, deputy head of the Russian occupation in Kherson, on Telegram. “The city of Kherson, like a fortress, is preparing its defense,” he added.
Pro-Russian forces urged civilians to move to the left bank of the Dnieper as Ukrainian forces wage a counteroffensive. kyiv calls this kind of population displacement “deportation”. The Ukrainian army quickly denied having targeted civilians: “We are not hitting essential infrastructure, we are not hitting peaceful settlements and the local population”, the spokeswoman for the southern command of the army told Ukrainian television. army, Natalia Goumenyuk.
The Russian occupation administration had earlier claimed that kyiv fired “twelve (long-range) Himars rockets at a civilian crossing point near the Antonovskiy Bridge” and that Russian anti-aircraft defenses shot down eleven. Russian television broadcast images of a damaged car and a traffic jam of vehicles waiting to cross the river.
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15,000 people already left Kherson
On Thursday, Kirill Stremousov said that 15,000 people had crossed the river to take refuge on the left bank, during evacuations organized by pro-Russian forces. He had assured that Russia would not abandon Kherson, the first major city in Ukraine to fall into the hands of Russian forces in March, shortly after the start of their offensive. “Kherson will resist to the last” man, he declared.
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin instituted martial law in the Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Luhansk, Donetsk and Zaporizhia, annexed in September by Moscow, but which the Russian army does not fully control.