Kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) - Moscow has announced the end of the movement of civilians within occupied Kherson, organised by Russia-installed authorities in the southern Ukrainian region in the face of a counter-offensive from Kyiv.
Kyiv's forces are preparing for a fierce battle to retake the region's main city Kherson and the surrounding areas on the right bank of the Dnipro River after making major gains in Ukraine's east and south.
The city with a pre-war population of around 288,000 people, was one of the first to fall to Moscow's troops in the early days of the February invasion and retaking it would mark a major milestone for Kyiv.
Moscow's forces have vowed to turn Kherson into a "fortress" faced with Ukraine's advancing troops in the region that the Kremlin claims to have annexed.
Since mid-October the occupation authorities have urged Kherson residents to cross to the left bank of the Dnipro River, deeper into Moscow-controlled territory and closer to regions of southern Russia.
By Friday, the movement of residents -- which Kyiv has compared to Soviet-like "deportations" -- was complete.
"The work to organise residents leaving to the left bank of the Dnipro (river) to safe regions of Russia is completed," Sergei Aksyonov, the Moscow-appointed head of Crimea, a peninsula Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, said on social media late on Thursday.
Chechen leader admits heavy losses
"The crossing (of the Dnipro) is empty!" Aksyonov said after he visited the region with the Kremlin's domestic chief Sergei Kiriyenko.
He posted photos of himself and other officials, including Kiriyenko, on a riverbank.
A Russian-installed official in Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, has said that at least 70,000 people have left their homes in the region in the space of a week.
Kyiv's army, meanwhile, said Friday Moscow's "so-called evacuation" is continuing.
It claimed that the Russian command in Kherson is trying to "hide the real losses of servicemen" in order to "avoid panic".
In a sign of Moscow suffering heavy losses, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said late on Thursday that 23 of his fighters were killed in battles around Kherson this week with dozens more wounded.
"At the beginning of this week, one of the Chechen units was shelled in the Kherson region," Kadyrov, who has sent his militia to fight alongside the Kremlin's forces, said on Telegram.
"23 soldiers were killed and 58 wounded," he said.
The Kremlin ally rarely reveals defeats but admitted that losses were "big on that day".
Elsewhere in Ukraine, local authorities reported a Russian strike that injured one person and damaged two multi-storey buildings as well as a bakery in the southern Mykolaiv region.
In the eastern Donetsk region, four people were killed and nine others injured in the past 24 hours, including in Bakhmut, a town where fierce battles have been taking place, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
IAEA to probe 'dirty bomb' claims
Aksyonov also said that he and Kiriyenko visited the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant -- Europe's largest atomic facility -- further north on the Dnipro River in Russian-occupied territory.
Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of shelling the plant, sparking fears of a nuclear disaster.
Aksyonov said they "met with the staff and assessed the general situation in the area of the plant".
Ukraine has accused Moscow's forces of "kidnapping" the plant's staff and said last week that around 50 employees are held in "captivity".
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday called on the UN's atomic agency to inspect Ukraine's nuclear site "as soon as possible" over Moscow's allegations that Kyiv is preparing a "dirty bomb" attack.
A dirty bomb is a conventional bomb laced with radioactive, biological or chemical materials which are dispersed in an explosion.
Kyiv has dismissed these claims as "dangerous" lies and suspects Russia might itself use a dirty bomb in a "false flag" attack.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Thursday it will conduct an "independent verification" of Russian allegations concerning the production of so-called dirty bombs at two sites in Ukraine.
