Officials appointed by Moscow in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine are preparing to leave the territories they still occupied, in what appears to be the beginning of a retreat, spokeswoman for the Southern Operational Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Nataliya Humenyk said on Tuesday. ., quoted by EFE and Agerpres.

In a statement to the Ukrainian channel “24”, which was intercepted by The Kyiv Independent, Humenyuk added that these representatives are leaving the territory, “taking with them all the documentation and things they looted” during the occupation.

Kherson is one of four Ukrainian regions, along with Zaporizhia (south), Luhansk and Donetsk (east), which President Vladimir Putin declared annexed to Russia at the end of September last year, although the Russian army has not managed to fully conquer them.

In the case of Kherson, the Ukrainian military managed to regain control of the regional capital of the same name and other nearby areas in November after the Russians withdrew their forces to the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, which bisects the region, from where they continued to attack Ukrainians.

The Ukrainian military refers to a new “gesture of goodwill” by the Russian military

“This is a signal that another “gesture of good will” is being prepared by the Russians,” Gumenyuk said sarcastically, using the expression Moscow uses to justify the withdrawal of its troops, forced to leave Zmiiny Island, the Kyiv region and other previously occupied regions of Ukraine.

A Ukrainian military official did not provide further details on the reasons for this possible withdrawal of Russian troops from Kherson, information that EFE could not independently confirm.

The Russian army, according to Natalia Gumenyuk, uses the civilian population living on the Black Sea coast in this region, adjacent to Mykolaiv (Mykolaiv), as “human shields”.

“They place their firing positions, including MLRS, right in people’s yards. This complicates our reaction, but does not make it completely impossible,” Humenyuk said.

The expected withdrawal of Russian troops from the area coincides with the intensification of the Russian offensive on the front in the Donetsk region (east), where both sides are focusing their efforts on controlling the city of Bakhmut, which has become a geostrategic symbol for both Russians and Ukrainians.

Follow the latest events of the 384th day of the war in Ukraine LIVETEXT on HOTNEWS.RO.