Ukraine battles intensify; Russia eyes space retaliation
Kyiv: Moscow-appointed authorities have fled the capital of southern Ukraine's Kherson region along with tens of thousands of residents as Ukrainian forces attacked Russia's hold on the city Thursday while fighting also intensified in the country's east.
Amid the battles, a senior Russian official warned that Western commercial satellites used for military purposes in support of Ukraine were a "legitimate target for a retaliatory strike."
Ukraine has pushed ahead with an offensive to reclaim the Kherson region and its capital of the same name, which Russian forces captured during the first days of a war now in its ninth month.
More than 70,000 residents from the Kherson city area have evacuated in recent days, the region's Kremlin-installed governor, Vladimir Saldo, said Thursday.
Members of the Russia-backed regional administration were included in the evacuation, the deputy governor, Kirill Stremousov said. Monuments to Russian heroes were moved, along with the remains of Grigory Potemkin, the Russian general who founded Kherson in the 18th century, that were kept at the city's St. Catherine's Church. Ukrainian forces were surrounding Kherson from the west and attacking Russia's foothold on the west bank of the Dnieper River, which divides the region and the country.
In eastern Ukraine, Russian forces continued to bombard the Donestsk region city of Bakhmut, making slow gains toward the center.
Amid the heavy combat on two fronts, a Russian official warned that the West could become part of the conflict.
The deputy head of Russia's delegation at a United Nations arms control panel, Konstantin Vorontsov, described the use of US and other Western commercial satellites for military purposes during the fighting in Ukraine as "extremely dangerous."
"The quasi-civilian infrastructure could be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike" Vorontsov warned without elaborating.
As they have all month, Russian forces carried out attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure that have caused increasing worry ahead of winter.
A Russian drone attack early Thursday hit an energy facility near the capital, causing a fire, said Kyiv region Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba. He said in a video statement that the latest attacks inflicted "very serious damage."
