Russian forces have once again left a trail of civilian deaths in their aggression against Ukraine.
A total of 23 people died on Wednesday under fire from the invader in the city of Kherson and neighboring municipalities, according to the Ukrainian authorities.
Half a hundred were also injured.
Kherson is on the southern front of the war, only the Dnieper River separating the two armies as it passes through the city.
These deaths, in a single day, are added to those of the 23 civilians killed on April 28 in a residential area of Uman, in central Ukraine, after being hit by Russian cruise missiles.
Less than half of the nearly 300,000 inhabitants who lived in Kherson in January last year are still in the city.
After the attacks on Wednesday, the departure of residents has accelerated, due to the growing war tension in this strategic enclave of the front.
This Friday begins a curfew in the municipality that will last 58 hours, until Monday.
The military authorities assure that this is an exceptional measure to reduce the movement of people in public spaces and thus better work on identifying possible Russian collaborators who provide information to the enemy.
Kherson province was taken by Russian forces at the beginning of the war, in February 2022, and recaptured by the kyiv army last November.
During those days last year, during a visit by EL PAÍS to the recently liberated region,
More information
Follow the latest on the invasion of Ukraine
On Wednesday, the Russian army attacked the vicinity of the train station, two commercial establishments, a factory and a car depot in Kherson, according to Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the province's Military Administration.
The Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelensky, published a dozen images of the corpses on his social networks.
"The world has to see and know this," Zelensky wrote to accompany some unusually harsh photographs in his messages.
Kherson is the only provincial capital conquered by Russia in the invasion that began on February 24 last year.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces liberated it last November, forcing the enemy to cross the Dnieper.
Russia controls the southern half of the province, unilaterally annexed by Moscow last September.
Eight months later, Kremlin artillery regularly shells the city, which Russian leaders have assured would be Russian forever.
A wounded man sits outside a supermarket after a Russian attack on Kherson on Wednesday.
DINA PLETENCHUK (AFP)
The secret of troop movement
Another reason why similar curfews have been applied in the past in Ukraine is to keep the movement of troops and weapons top secret.
The Ukrainian army has severely restricted press access to areas close to the front lines.
A spokeswoman for the Ukrainian General Staff assures EL PAÍS that part of the Leopard tanks transferred by the NATO allies are already in front areas and their location is to be kept absolutely secret.
Ukraine is concentrating international weapons received since January (mainly tanks, armored infantry vehicles and new howitzers) for an imminent counteroffensive.
Army sources inform this newspaper that the attack could take place in mid-May.
Rising temperatures and less rainfall in recent days are hardening the ground in rural areas enough to facilitate the movement of armored vehicles.
Only three people in Ukraine know where the counteroffensive will focus, Kirilo Danilov, secretary of the National Security Council, revealed last April.
There are five options: in the east, kyiv can try to advance from the Kharkov province towards the Russian-occupied Lugansk province;
another possibility is to drive the invader back in Bakhmut and Avdiivka towards the city of Donetsk, also in the east;
on the southern front, (the possibility most recommended by the United States and the United Kingdom), is to assault the Russian defenses from Zaporizhia and approach the city of Melitopol, on the coast of the Azov Sea, also occupied by the enemy.
Finally, also in the south, from the western bank of the Dnieper River, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are concentrating troops for a possible amphibious landing from the city of Nova Kajovka or from Kherson itself.
The landing option is the most complex.
The experts consulted by this newspaper in the last month point out that multiple assaults can take place, in various regions, to deceive the enemy.
This was the case in 2022 with the advance on Kherson and on Kharkov.
Follow all the international information on
and
, or in
our weekly newsletter
.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I'm already a subscriber