Russia is preparing for a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the occupied southern part of the war-torn nation by evacuating Ukrainian civilians from the area, The New York Times reported.
Ukrainian military sources told the publication that Russian authorities in the occupied southern region, including the cities of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, were urging Ukrainian citizens to get Russian passports and travel south to the Crimean Peninsula Russia annexed in 2014.
"The Russian occupiers intensified preparations for the evacuation of the local population in the temporarily occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson," the Times reported the Ukrainian military's General Staff saying in its morning update.
According to the report, Moscow is pushing the evacuation in anticipation of a massive Ukrainian counteroffensive to reclaim the territory with "sophisticated" Western weapons.
"The invaders are spreading information that the forced evacuation of the civilian population will begin at the end of April," the General Staff update said.
According to the report, both Russian and Ukrainian forces are massing along a front line near Zaporizhzhia, potentially signaling a significant upcoming conflict there.
Newsweek reported in March that Ukraine is hoping the spring counteroffensive will not only drive Russian forces from the occupied territory, but also liberate the region.
According to the report, Russian troops have suffered significant casualties, with possibly tens of thousands of troops killed in fighting around Donetsk Oblast and the town of Avdiivka.
"Russian forces may or may not be able to drive Ukrainian troops out of Avdiivka or Bakhmut, but they will gain no significant operational advantage from doing either because they lack the ability to exploit such advances," The Institute for the Study of War told the news outlet at the time. "The Russian milblogger [military blogger] space and Russian, Ukrainian, and Western media are full of discussions of the upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive, about which the only real questions appear to be when and where it will occur."
That report cited the Russian state-run TASS media outlet reporting as many as 75,000 Ukrainian troops massed around the Zaporizhzhia front.
But even as the troops were spotted gathering in the south, Russian media also reported "a growing concentration" of Ukrainian artillery units in the eastern Donbass region front, making it difficult to know where the potential Ukrainian counteroffensive will launch from, the report said.
"[Russian military officials] are very worried," Oleg Ignatov, Crisis Group's senior analyst for Russia, told Newsweek in the report. "They've always had bad intelligence about Ukraine. I think they don't have a clear understanding of how many resources the Ukrainians do have right now."
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