Russia Pushes Ukrainians to Relocate as Possible Battle for Kherson Looms

Russia moved on Tuesday to expel Ukrainian civilians from their homes in a broader swath of occupied Kherson, as signs grew that a major battle for control of the region was nearing.

The city of Kherson is the only regional capital conquered since the Russians invaded in February, and Ukrainian officials say they are determined to retake it, no matter how high the cost. On Tuesday, with Ukrainian forces steadily advancing under heavy artillery fire, Russian soldiers were reported to be fortifying defensive positions around the city, including around residential areas.

The Ukrainian military said that the calls by occupation officials for people to leave the area were part of a campaign to terrorize and deport tens of thousands of civilians across the Dnipro River to areas in the east still firmly under Moscow’s control.

Russian-controlled local officials cast the relocation as intended to protect civilians, but reports emerging from Kherson suggested less high-minded motives for clearing the city.

 “They intimidate people and make them evacuate,” a Kherson resident named Tetiana, 60, said in a text message on Tuesday, asking that her surname not be used for her safety. Then, she said, “Russian soldiers take the houses of those who left and loot everything.”

Kherson, a shipbuilding city about 340 miles south of Kyiv, is strategically important as an access point to the Black Sea and Crimea, and provides a path to Ukraine’s southern coastline for invading Russian forces. Its loss would deal both a strategic and psychological blow to Russia.

A little over a week ago, Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-appointed governor of Kherson, said that tens of thousands of people should evacuate the regional capital — and that those who did not obey risked being treated as hostile. On Tuesday, Mr. Saldo expanded the order to encompass all towns, villages and cities within 10 miles of the river.

Russian proxy officials indicated on Tuesday night that the order would also apply to the entire district around a strategically important dam about 40 miles upriver, in Kakhovka, and include some people living on the eastern side of the Dnipro.

Vitaly Kim, the Ukrainian head of the regional military administration in the embattled southern city of Mykolaiv, said that the Russians were clearing out civilians to provide places for newly mobilized troops to stay, hoping that by providing spaces to live with heat, water and power — conditions he said were better than at home — they would be more motivated to fight. In essence, he said, the Russians are turning the eastern bank of the river into a “militarized zone.”

In the city of Kherson, residents said the situation was growing more dire by the day. One resident, Katerina, 38, wrote in a text message that over the weekend they could hear “fighting on the outskirts of the city.”

“The city is empty, as if it were dying,” Katerina wrote. “But we are alive. We keep on and wait.”

Satellite imagery from last week indicated that Russian forces had abandoned their positions at the Kherson regional airport, about seven miles outside the city. Local proxies said Russian forces had begun engineering defensive positions in Bilozerka and Chornobaivka, also on the city’s outskirts.

And late Tuesday, the Ukrainian military high command said that the offices of the Russian occupation administration in Kherson had been relocated. Such a move had been expected for weeks, but instead of setting up on the Russia-controlled east bank of the Dnipro, occupation officials moved some 50 miles southeast to the city of Skadovsk, on the Black Sea.

Even as Russian forces prepared for what might turn out to be a critical battle in Kherson, Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, affirmed that a military mobilization order that prompted hundreds of thousands of Russian men to leave the country was no longer in effect.

“It has been completed, period,” Mr. Putin told reporters at the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where he was meeting with the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, and the prime minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan.

Mr. Putin said that the conscription had met its goal of bringing in 300,000 more soldiers, but that at the moment only 41,000 of them were involved in combat operations.

In Norway on Tuesday, several dozen Ukrainian air defense troops were completing training on how to use the sophisticated systems intended to help Ukraine fend off the wave of aerial attacks Moscow has been conducting against infrastructure. Cities across the country, even those far from the front, have lost power, heat and water in the attacks.

The end of the training, which has been underway for several weeks, would pave the way for the delivery of National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, known as NASAMS. The first two should arrive in Ukraine in the next several days, American officials said on Tuesday.

The NASAMS, which are equipped with radar-guided missiles powerful enough to take down fighter jets, military drones and cruise missiles, provide short- to medium-range coverage of about 18 to 30 miles. Such weapons are used to defend the White House and other sites in Washington from aerial attack.

On Tuesday, a day after cruise missiles knocked out tap water for almost the entire capital, Kyiv, officials said service had been fully restored. Until then, many residents had been forced to gather water at public fountains.

But meeting with the European commissioner for energy, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said that some 40 percent of his nation’s critical energy infrastructure had been destroyed or damaged. He said Russian strikes had severely damaged thermal power plants, combined heat and power plants and hydroelectric power plants.

Mr. Zelensky also spoke on Tuesday with President Emmanuel Macron of France, securing a pledge to help Ukraine repair water and energy infrastructure. The two leaders also agreed to hold an international conference in Paris in December aimed at supporting Ukraine’s civilians through the winter.

Russia’s suspension of an internationally brokered deal to free up food exports blocked in Black Sea ports has raised alarm in countries already struggling to feed their people. In southern Ukraine, three ships did set off on Tuesday carrying corn, wheat and sunflower oil, but U.N. officials said no vessels were expected to leave on Wednesday, raising questions about how long the safe-passage deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey could continue.

After speaking with Mr. Putin on Tuesday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said he was “confident” that differences over the grain deal could be resolved.

And a day after President Biden accused oil companies, awash in money since the Russian invasion, of “war profiteering” and demanded that they expand supplies, Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, said on Tuesday that it had earned $42.4 billion in net income in the third quarter.

The revenues enabled the company, which is state-controlled and has a near-monopoly on Saudi Arabia’s oil output, to pay a large dividend — $18.75 billion — mostly to the country’s government. The group known as OPEC Plus, which includes Saudi Arabia and Russia, is cutting production to raise the price of oil further, a step Western leaders fear will help Mr. Putin pay for his war.