In the occupied city of Kherson, Russian troops are now largely wearing civilian clothes and living in civilian housing as they “strengthen their positions to conduct street battles,” according to the Ukrainian military and a city resident who CNN spoke to. “Amid the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the occupiers have significantly stepped up filtering measures,” the National Resistance Center, a creation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said on Monday. “Raids among the local population have intensified in the temporarily occupied part of the Kherson region. The occupiers are actively looking for the underground movement.” The National Resistance Center said it was aware of dozens of arrests in recent days. He called on civilians to leave the occupied territories “if possible” as the Ukrainian army pushes forward with its counter-offensive. Fewer checkpoints, more aggressive behavior: A resident of the occupied city of Kherson told CNN through a third party on Sunday that Russian soldiers in occupied villages are behaving more aggressively toward civilians. “On the west bank, near Snihurivka, there are cases of squatters moving into local people’s houses when people move to the city,” the resident said. “Many soldiers were coming to the villages, settling in empty houses. But there are cases where they evict people from their homes.” CNN is not identifying the Chersona resident for their safety. The city of Kherson itself was “relatively quiet,” he said. “Sometimes you can hear automatic gunfire at night,” the resident said. “There is a curfew in the city and no one goes out at night. The occupiers have created some kind of territorial defense in the city, which deals with security issues.” Checkpoints within the city itself have been removed, he said. “There are only checkpoints at the entrance to the city. At the checkpoint they check documents and see what is in the car. If it is public transport, then the soldier enters the minibus. It can vary, it all depends on the mood of the conquerors. They can start checking phones and make men undress to check for tattoos.” More young soldiers appearing: The resident said that most of the soldiers appeared to be over 30 years old, but that they had started to see more young men, around 18 to 20 years old. Russian authorities on Monday continued to try to restore electricity after an outage on Sunday. “I believe that electricity and communication will be restored in the near future,” Kirill Stremusov, the Russian-appointed deputy head of the Kherson region’s military command, said in a Monday morning Telegram video. “There is no food problem in the city, there is food. It is true that some pharmacies are closed, but it is not impossible to get social benefits. We continue to work on that as well.” Stremusov said authorities continued to offer “evacuation” to the east bank of the Dnipro River, even now to bedridden civilians or people with reduced mobility. Evacuation offers like this have fueled concerns that Ukrainian citizens may be forced onto Russian soil against their will. Reports emerged early in the war of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians being forcibly sent to so-called “filtering centers” before being transferred to Russia. Moscow has denounced the claims as lies, claiming that Ukraine has blocked its efforts to “evacuate” people to Russia. The resident of the city of Kherson who spoke to CNN saw the idea of getting on an “evacuation bus” to Crimea as a “one-way ticket”.
