Putin mobilizes Russia to support the war effort as the strategic battle of Kherson is approaching and attacks are escalating on Ukraine’s energy and water infrastructure

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered all of Russia on Wednesday to support the war effort in Ukraine, as the Russian-appointed administration of Kherson prepared to vacate the only administrative capital that Moscow captured during its invasion.

Russian state television broadcast pictures of people fleeing the strategic southern city and described the mass exodus from the area as an attempt to clear the city of civilians before it became a combat zone.

The Russian-appointed governor of Kherson said that between 50,000 and 60,000 people would be evacuated in the next six days.

Kherson is one of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow said it had unilaterally annexed, in which Putin declared martial law on Wednesday.

“The Ukrainian side is mobilizing its forces to launch a large-scale attack … There is no place for civilians in a place where military operations are taking place,” Governor Vladimir Saldo told state television.

Kherson is considered the most strategically important of the areas annexed by Moscow, as it controls both the only land route to Crimea that Russia captured in 2014, as well as the 2,200-kilometre estuary of the Dnipro River that divides Ukraine in two.

Saldo said workers in the Russian-backed Kherson administration had also been moved to the eastern side of Dnipro, although he noted that Russia had the resources to hold the city and even launch a counterattack if necessary.

Russian forces in the area have retreated by 20-30 km in the past few weeks.

Eight months after the Russian invasion, Ukraine rose up and launched major counterattacks in the east and south in an effort to regain as much territory as possible before winter.

Russia intensified its attacks using missiles and drones on Ukraine’s energy and water infrastructure this week in what Ukraine and the West call a campaign to terrorize civilians ahead of the cold winter.

Government officials and the power grid operator said that the nationwide electricity supply will be reduced on Thursday between 7:00 am and 11:00 pm (Local time).

A presidential aide said on Telegram that street lighting in cities would be limited.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address on Wednesday evening that Russia had destroyed three energy facilities in the past 24 hours.

A Ukrainian governor said a Russian missile strike hit a major power plant in the western Ukrainian city of Borshten on Wednesday.

In televised remarks during a meeting of the Kremlin’s Security Council, Putin ordered the strengthening of the powers of Russia’s regional governors and the formation of a special coordination council headed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin to support the “special military operation”.

Putin said that “the entire system of state administration” should be directed to support the war effort in Ukraine.

The immediate impact of Putin’s declaration of martial law was not clear beyond the tightening of security measures in Kherson and the other three provinces.

But Ukraine, which does not recognize Moscow’s annexation of the four regions, scoffed at this move.

“Implementation of ‘martial law’ on lands occupied by Russia can only be seen as absurd legislation to plunder Ukrainian property,” Mikhailo Podolyak, an advisor to the Ukrainian president, wrote on Twitter.

“This won’t change anything for Ukraine: we are continuing to liberate our lands and rid them of occupation,” he added.