The British Ministry of Defense has published the latest report regarding the war in Ukraine.
In it, British intelligence recalls that on October 27, the governor of the occupied Ukrainian Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, appointed by Russia, said that over 70,000 people have now left Kherson.
On October 26, 2022, Saldo also claimed that Russia had removed the remains of a famous 18th-century Russian statesman, Prince Grigory Potemkin, from his tomb in a cathedral in Kherson east of Dnipro.
In Russian national identity, Potemkin is strongly associated with the Russian occupation of Ukrainian lands in the 18th century, and underlines the weight that Putin almost certainly places on the perceived historical justification for the occupation.
This symbolic departure of Potemkin and the exodus of residents probably precedes the accelerated withdrawal of Russian forces from the area, the British intelligence report says, among other things.