KYIV, Ukraine — As Ukrainian Forces Intensify attack behind enemy lines In the face of an expected counter-offensive, Russia is imposing stricter measures on civilians in occupied regions of Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said.
Russian occupation agencies have “intensified” counterintelligence units and are restricting travel between towns and villages, a senior Ukrainian military commander said on Tuesday, following efforts to target Russification and punishment of dissidents in regions of Ukraine under Russian control.
The moves come after the Kremlin last week decreed that anyone in the occupied regions of Ukraine would not accept Russian passports. can be relocated from their home — a decree that has instilled confusion and fear among the Ukrainian people, according to the Ukrainian military and local officials. On Monday, Ukraine’s human rights commissioner urged Ukrainians to live under Russian occupation get Russian passports for their own safetyCall it a matter of survival.
According to the National Center for Resistance, a Ukrainian government agency that coordinates and monitors activity in those areas, Russian security agents have begun working in crowded public spaces within the site. plainclothes to track down members of the Ukrainian resistance in the occupied areas.
Undercover officers will usually initiate a conversation, the agency said, “to find ‘disloyal’ citizens.” The agency said those who “got the hook were forced to continue to cooperate with the Russian occupation regime”.
It is almost impossible to independently verify much of what happens in Russian-occupied territory because independent journalists, humanitarian groups and international observers rarely have access to Russian authorities with permission.
But the Kremlin has made no secret of its efforts to incorporate these regions into Russia, announcing in September that it had annexation of 4 southern and eastern Ukrainian provincesa move widely condemned as illegal.
Ukrainian officials and international observers have said that last week’s Kremlin decree allowing residents to be expelled from occupied areas if they do not hold Russian citizenship is evidence of a Russian effort. to undermine the very idea of Ukraine’s statehood.
Ukrainian officials often urge people living in the occupied territories to resist Russia in any way possible, but advice on how to deal with pressure to accept Russian passports has been mixed.
While the Ukrainian human rights commissioner call everyone to get Russian passports for their own safety, Iryna Vereschuk, deputy prime minister, asked people not to take them.
Serhii Khlan, deputy administrator of Kherson Regional Council, told Ukrainian TV station late on Monday, he regretted to find that there was no clear view of what to do because of the “huge” pressure on locals. He said people worry that they will be seen as “collaborators” of Russia if they accept passports.
Ukraine’s General Staff, the body responsible for the country’s overall military strategy, said the “violent kidnapping of pro-Ukrainian civilians” in the occupied areas continued and there were signs Many civilians may be detained. “The Russian occupiers held the people in harsh, inhumane conditions, torturing them,” the General Staff said in a statement Tuesday night.
The claims cannot be independently verified, but Russia’s pattern of civilian abuse – including illegal detention, torture and execution – has been recognized by international investigators and media outlets Independent media, including The New York Times, recorded.
Reflecting on the dangers faced by the Russian occupiers themselves, both Ukrainian and Russian officials reported an assassination attempt on the Kremlin-appointed deputy director of the Interior Ministry on Tuesday.
Russia’s main domestic intelligence agency said a bomb was planted near the home of the unnamed official and he was wounded. “The victim has been taken to the hospital and a criminal case has been opened,” Russia’s Federal Investigative Committee said in a statement reported by RIA Novosti, Russia’s state news agency.
Earlier, the exiled mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, reported that residents in the northern districts of the city heard the sound of the explosion and celebrated the attack.
