Moscow’s new army commander in Ukraine has announced that civilians were being “relocated” from the Russian-occupied southern city of Kherson and described the military situation as “tense”.
“The enemy is continuously trying to attack the positions of Russian troops,” Sergei Surovikin said in his first televised interview since being appointed earlier this month, adding that the situation was particularly difficult around the occupied southern city of Kherson.
Surovikin’s remarks on Tuesday came amid repeated military setbacks for Russian forces that have fueled Moscow’s reliance on Iran, which supplies missiles and drones.
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that military advisers from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were on Ukrainian soil, at a Russian military base in occupied Crimea. The Iranians were reported to have been deployed to help Russian troops deal with problems with the Tehran-supplied fleet of Shahed-136 drones, renamed Geran-2 by the attackers.
Russian forces have tried to halt a fierce Ukrainian counterattack in Kherson, a region in southern Ukraine that Moscow claimed to have annexed last month after holding a mock referendum.
Surovikin admitted that the situation in Kherson was “not easy.”
“Additional actions and plans on the city of Kherson will depend on the developing military-tactical situation, which is not easy. We will act consciously, in a timely manner, without ruling out difficult decisions,” he added.
The comments appeared to mark a rare acknowledgment of the difficulties facing Russian forces. But it was not immediately clear whether Surovikin, the ruthless general now in charge of the war, was hinting at an imminent Russian retreat from Kherson or a new round of airstrikes.
Kherson, which lies near the mouth of the Dnipro on the western bank, was one of the first cities to fall to Russia after the February 24 invasion and is a crucial strategic and symbolic target for the government of ‘Ukraine.
Heavy clashes have been reported in the region since the start of Ukraine’s counter-offensive at the end of the summer, with heavy casualties on both sides.
The Ukrainian military has attempted to cut Russian supply lines to Kherson by destroying the two main road bridges across the Dnipro. Kyiv recently introduced a news blackout in the south of the country, prompting speculation that it was preparing a major new offensive on Kherson.
“When the Ukrainians have a news blackout it means something is going on. They’ve always done it before when there’s a big offensive push,” Michael Clarke, a former director general of the Royal United Services Institute, told Sky News.
“I guess in the next 48-72 hours they could tell us what’s going on,” he added.
Shortly after Surovikin’s remarks, the head of Kherson based in Russia, Vladimir Saldo, said in a video address that people from four cities in the Kherson region were being evacuated, in anticipation of an “offensive on a grand scale.”
Kirill Stremousov, the Russian-installed deputy administrator of the Kherson region, echoed the message on Telegram on Tuesday afternoon. “The battle for Kherson will begin in the very near future. The civilian population is advised, if possible, to leave the area of the upcoming fierce hostilities,” he said.
Since Surovikin’s appointment on October 8, Moscow has launched a barrage of cruise missiles and “kamikaze” drones targeting Ukraine’s critical infrastructure as well as the civilian population.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Moscow’s use of Iranian-made drones was a symbol of the Kremlin’s “military and political failure.”
“The very fact of Russia’s appeal to Iran for help is the Kremlin’s recognition of its military and political bankruptcy,” Zelenskiy said in his daily speech on Tuesday.
“For decades, they spent billions of dollars on their own military industrial complex. And in the end, they bowed to Tehran in order to secure fairly simple drones and missiles.”
But, Zelenskiy added, “strategically, it won’t help them anyway. It just shows the world that Russia is on the road to defeat and that it’s trying to lure someone else into its accomplices with terror.”
Bombing is often inaccurate and has killed civilians in residential buildings in Kyiv and other major cities. But it’s enough to cause problems for an electricity grid that no longer generates after the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was shut down.
Almost a third of Ukraine’s power plants have been destroyed by Russian attacks since Monday last week, prompting NATO’s secretary general to announce that new drone defenses would be delivered within days.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the presidential office, said energy infrastructure and power supplies were targeted overnight in a district in eastern Kyiv, where two people were killed, and in the cities of Dnipro and Zhytomyr.
“The situation is critical now in the whole country because our regions depend on each other… it is necessary for the whole country to prepare for cuts in electricity, water and heating,” Tymoshenko told Ukrainian television.
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, said member countries would “step up” and provide more air defenses to help stabilize the situation. “In the coming days, NATO will deliver anti-drone systems to counter the specific drone threat, including those from Iran,” he said.
While there are signs that Moscow is running low on guided missiles, it has acquired up to 2,400 Iranian drones, according to Ukraine, and is using them as cheaper substitutes to meet energy targets and strike fear into civilians.
Iran denies supplying the drones to Russia, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had no information on their origin. “Russian teams with Russian names are being used,” Peskov said.
Ukraine, experts and Western governments believe the Gerans are renamed Shahed drones, identifiable by their distinctive delta wing shape and by examination of fragments recovered from the ground.
A Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity at a briefing on Tuesday, said they believed Russia was “pursuing a deliberate strategy of trying to destroy Ukraine’s power grid.”
Reuters reported that Iran had promised to provide Russia with surface-to-surface missiles as well as more drones, citing two senior Iranian officials and two Iranian diplomats.
UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace and Foreign Secretary James Cleverly flew to Washington on Tuesday to discuss how to respond to Iran’s intervention, while officials reported that a new air defense package for Ukraine.
Germany last week delivered the first of four Iris-T air defense systems it had promised to supply to Ukraine, but the United States has been wary of bolstering Ukraine’s air force and defenses for fear it would be seen as an escalation.
Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the US House of Representatives, warned on Tuesday that Congress would not “write a blank check to Ukraine” if his party wins next month’s midterm elections.
Hours later, however, another senior Republican, Michael McCaul, said he thought the Ukrainians should “get what they need,” including longer-range missiles than the Biden administration has been preparing until now to supply.
Analysts say the mixed messages reflect an internal debate between traditional national security conservatives and the Trump wing of the party, where pro-Russian sentiment is much stronger.