Russia said on Thursday that it would help residents leave the southern Ukrainian province of Kherson, a move that comes as Ukraine has been recapturing territory in the region and Moscow continues its bombardment of the country.
“The government took the decision to organize assistance for the departure of residents” of the region, Marat Khusnullin, Russia’s deputy prime minister, said on state television.
The announcement followed a plea by the Russian-appointed leader of the region for Russia to assist in relocating residents. The statement by the leader, Volodymyr Saldo, seemed timed to deflect attention from Russian forces who, since Monday, have killed more than three dozen Ukrainians in a barrage of missile strikes on towns and cities.
Mr. Saldo, who is viewed as a traitor by the government in Kyiv, said that because of attacks by Ukrainian forces, residents should head to the Crimean Peninsula, which has been controlled since 2014 by Russian forces, or to Russia itself.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, said in a post on Telegram that Mr. Saldo’s appeal was evidence of panic.
Since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, thousands of people have been detained and deported into Russia from areas of the country that it controls, according to U.S. intelligence assessment. That process is known as filtration. Thousands of civilians also have fled Kherson in recent weeks and entered territory controlled by Ukraine, often heading first to the city of Zaporizhzhia, northeast of Kherson Province.
Russian forces have launched a series of attacks on civilians. In the most deadly example, at least 30 people were killed on Sept. 30 in a missile strike on a convoy of vehicles leaving Zaporizhzhia. Russia says it does not attack civilians and has accused Ukraine of hitting civilian targets in areas that it controls.
Kherson is one of four Ukrainian provinces that President Vladimir V. Putin said last week were being annexed to Russia. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, as well as governments around the world, say the annexation is illegal. Mr. Saldo said Ukraine’s missile strikes were a reprisal for the annexation.
Russia appointed Mr. Saldo in the spring after its forces took over Kherson, a province north of the Crimean Peninsula that is bisected by the Dnipro River. Ukraine said in late August that it was mounting a counteroffensive to reclaim land in the south, and Ukrainian authorities said recently that they had reclaimed hundreds of square miles of territory in Kherson, as well as a string of villages.
The counteroffensive has pushed Russian forces back in some places and has also placed pressure on the thousands of soldiers Moscow has stationed in the city of Kherson, which is on the river’s western bank. Ukraine has cut four bridges close to the city and has also pinpointed Russian military infrastructure in the province, using artillery supplied by the West.
Mr. Saldo said that the evacuation, which was organized initially by local authorities, applied to people who lived on both banks of the river.
“We, the inhabitants of the Kherson region, of course, know that Russia does not abandon its own people,” he said, “and Russia always lends a shoulder where it is difficult.”
