Putin declares martial law in four annexed regions of Ukraine

President Putin today declared martial law in four regions of Ukraine that the Kremlin claims as part of its territory, in a move that comes as Russia’s army faces another major setback in the eight month-long war.

In a meeting with his national security council, Putin said the order would apply to the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions. None of the regions are fully controlled by Russia and Ukraine is mounting a major counter-offensive in the Kherson region. “Now we need to formalise this regime within the framework of Russian legislation,” Putin said on national television.

The Kremlin announced last month that it was annexing the four regions, in the biggest land grab in Europe since the Second World War. They make up an area around the size of Portugal and represent 15 per cent of Ukraine’s territory.

Putin also announced the creation of a state coordination council that will be responsible for what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine. It will be headed by Mikhail Mishustin, the prime minister.

The imposition of martial law allows officials to close borders, confiscate property and carry out compulsory mobilisation into the Russian army. It is unclear what measures will be enforced in the four regions, however. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said there were no immediate plans to close the borders of the four regions.

Russian-installed officials in the occupied region of Kherson are also evacuating tens of thousands of people to Russia, as Ukrainian troops push forward to reclaim more territory in the south of the country.

Last night Moscow confirmed that evacuations will take place from the region’s towns on the right bank of the Dnipro river, near to the Black Sea, due to fears that attacks could burst a nearby dam.

This morning Vladimir Saldo, the chief of the occupied region in southern Ukraine, said that the situation “is getting tense” and that between 50,000 and 60,000 people will be moved to Russia and the left bank of the Dnipro over the next six days. Some regions in Russia were being prepared to accept the evacuees, he added.

Saldo said that the authorities were moving civilians in order to “keep people safe” and allow the military to “act resolutely”. He added: “I drove through the regional centre this morning. On the exterior, there was nothing to suggest there was a lot of pressure. But when I arrived at the river port I saw that the boats were waiting and are already loaded with people ready to go to the left bank of the Dnipro.”

Residents in Kherson have received text messages warning of the urgent need to evacuate, Russian state TV reported. More than 5,000 have left in the last two days, Saldo said.

It comes just three weeks after President Putin signed the decree annexing Kherson into Russia following a staged referendum. The region’s capital was the first major Ukrainian city to be occupied by Russian forces after the invasion began in late February.

But Ukrainian troops have pushed back Russia’s advance in a counter-offensive in the last few weeks, and the pro-Russian official Kirill Stremousov announced yesterday the “battle for Kherson” will begin in the “very near future”.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to President Zelensky, mocked the Kremlin, noting that Putin had recently declared that Kherson would be part of Russia forever. “Reality can hurt if you live in a fictional fantasy world,” he wrote on Twitter.

Shelling continued overnight in central and southern parts of Ukraine and this morning a wave of Russian attacks targeted major cities and Ukraine’s electricity grid.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said Wednesday that “several Russian rockets” had been downed over the capital after several loud explosions were heard in the centre of the city.

“Air defenses have shot down several Russian rockets over Kyiv. Stay in shelters!” Klitschko wrote on social media.

Russian media also claimed that Ukraine had attempted to recapture the occupied Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant — Europe’s largest such facility — but their attempt was repelled after several hours of fighting.

“After shelling the city, a landing attempt was launched, including an attempt to seize Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant. The battle went on for several hours, at least three to three and a half hours,” the state-run RIA news agency quoted official Vladimir Rogov as saying.

Dmytro Orlov, the mayor of Enerhodar, the city where the plant is located, did not confirm the Russian reports but said the surrounding region was facing power and water outages after shelling in the industrial zone and the “city itself”.

“At night, Enerhodar came under fire again,” Orlov said. “The city is partially without electricity and water. The shelling, first of the industrial zone, and then of the city itself, began around midnight and did not stop in the morning. There are reports of damage to one of the substations, as well as to the building of the executive committee of the city council.”

Strikes also continued overnight in the Dnipropetrovsk region, where another energy facility was hit, and in Mykolaiv, where air defence forces said they had shot down at least a dozen Iranian-made explosive drones, fired by Russia.

In Kherson this morning Stremousov issued the evacuation orders, while insisting that Russia’s control of territory remains “unchanged”.

“The defence on the outskirts of the Kherson region stands still and is ready to repel any attacks of the Ukro-Nazi mercenaries,” he said, using a common Russian insult for the defending forces.

However he said he could not discount the “possible shelling of the right-bank part of the Kherson region… therefore we ask civilians to cross to the left bank in order to avoid civilian casualties.”

The liberation of Kherson would be a major success for Kyiv and a humiliation for Putin. General Sergei Surovikin, the new commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, last night described the situation in the region as “difficult”, while vowing the “safe evacuation” of residents from the southern city.

Putin has replaced four out of five of the generals who were in command of the initial invasion of Ukraine, following a series of setbacks and failure to achieve Moscow’s stated war aims.

But for the last ten days the Kremlin’s forces have intensified their bombardment of cities and energy infrastructure across Ukraine. Russia’s missile and drone attacks on power stations and other targets were described as “acts of pure terror” that amount to war crimes by Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President, today.

But in London, the Ministry of Defence said in its latest briefing that Russia’s military leadership in Ukraine was “increasingly dysfunctional”.

“At the tactical level, there is almost certainly a worsening shortage of capable Russian junior officers to organise and lead newly mobilised reservists,” the Ministry said. “Eyewitness testimony suggests that the shooting of 11 Russian soldiers near Belgorod by a fellow recruit on 15 October 2022 occurred after an officer’s abusive comments towards ethnic minority recruits.

 “Poor lower-level leadership is likely worsening the low morale and poor unit cohesion in many parts of the Russian force.”

Commenting on the replacement of senior officers, the MoD added: “The lack of command continuity will likely be more disruptive than in a Western military because under Russian doctrine the development of plans sits largely with the commander personally, rather than as a collective effort across a broader staff.”

Analysts have speculated that Belarus, Putin’s closest ally, could soon be directly drawn into the war.

Today the defence ministry in Minsk announced that it had begun summoning citizens to check their eligibility for military service, but that it was not planning mobilisation.

“The military registration and enlistment activities are strictly routine and are expected to be completed by the end of this year,” it said in a statement.