GG News Bureau
New Delhi, 20th Oct. India issued an advisory on Wednesday telling all of its citizens to avoid traveling to Ukraine due to the country’s “deteriorating security situation.”
“In view of the deteriorating security situation and recent escalation of hostilities across Ukraine, Indian nationals are advised against travelling to Ukraine,” the Indian embassy in Ukraine said on Twitter.
“The Indian citizens, including students, currently in Ukraine are advised to leave Ukraine at the earliest by available means,” it further said.
The statement came as Russian President Vladimir Putin declared martial law in four Ukrainian regions that he claims Russia has annexed, while some residents of the occupied city of Kherson fled by boat following warnings of an impending attack.
Russian state television broadcast images of people fleeing Kherson, portraying the exodus – from the right to left bank of the Dnipro River – as an attempt to clear the city of civilians before it became a combat zone.
Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the local Russia-backed administration, issued a video appeal after Russian forces in the area were pushed back 20-30 kilometers in recent weeks. They risk being pinned against the western bank of Ukraine’s 2,200-kilometer-long Dnipro river.
In an apparent attempt to strengthen Russia’s grip on the Ukrainian regions it partially occupies, including Kherson, Putin informed his Security Council that he was imposing martial law in those areas.
It was unclear what the immediate impact of much tighter security measures on the ground would be.
Kyiv, which rejects Moscow’s ostensible annexation of the four regions, slammed the move.
“‘Martial law’ implementation on the occupied territories by Russia should be considered only as a pseudo-legalisation of (the) looting of Ukrainians’ property,” tweeted Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser.
“This does not change anything for Ukraine: we continue the liberation and deoccupation of our territories.”
After routing Russian forces in some areas, Ukraine is waging major counter-offensives in the east and south to try to take as much territory as possible before winter.
Thousands have been killed, millions have been displaced, Ukrainian cities have been razed, the global economy has been rocked, and Cold War-era geopolitical fissures have resurfaced.
Putin also issued a decree restricting movement in and out of eight Ukraine-adjacent regions and directed the formation of a special coordinating council led by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin to bolster the country’s flagging war effort.
Kherson is the largest population center seized and held by Moscow since the start of its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24.
The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, accused Russia of staging a propaganda show there.
“The Russians are trying to scare the people of Kherson with fake newsletters about the shelling of the city by our army, and also arrange a propaganda show with evacuation,” Yermak wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
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