Head of annexed Kherson region: 70,000 cross to east bank of Dnipro

More than 70,000 people have crossed from the right (western) bank of the Dnipro to the left, said Vladimir Saldo, Russian-appointed head of the annexed region, on air on the Crimea-24 channel. 

“It’s pretty hard to get a count there. It’s correct in cases where we can keep an accurate account – people calling the call center and saying they want to cross to the the left bank. But Kherson is a river city. People have their own boats, their own possibilities. But I’m sure more than 70,000 have left in the week since we started an organized crossing,” he said.

Saldo added that a ban on entering the right bank, which took effect on October 19 and was originally supposed to last seven days, has been extended “to give the largest quantity of people possible the chance to leave the possible battle zone.”

On October 19, in the annexed part of the Kherson region, an “organized transfer” of people to the Dnipro’s left bank began. As of October 22, representatives of the Russian-appointed administration of the annexed region said that around 25,000 people had left.

Previously, Vladimir Saldo explained the evacuation by saying that Ukraine was planning a full-scale offensive, and that Ukrainian forces were allegedly preparing to blow up the dam at the Kakhovka Hydropower Station. American think tank the Institute for the Study of War said that, in fact, Russia was preparing to damage the dam at Kakhovka Hydropower Station and blame Ukraine. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Russian soldiers have mined the dam. 

In times of war it is impossible to verify even information disseminated by official representatives of parties to the conflict.

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