Hannibak Hanschke/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
   The battle for the southern city of Kherson is intensifying as Ukrainian forces try to break through Russian defenses and occupation forces step up pressure on residents to flee their homes.   

  Both sides reported heavy fighting in the Beryslav district of the Russian-held city, where Kiev forces are trying to break through.   

  Kirill Stremousov, the Russian-backed deputy head of the military command of the Kherson region, said on Telegram that the Ukrainians are “trying in every possible way, with a reconnaissance battle, to break through the Beryslav direction” but that “all attempts are being repelled” .  He added that about 70 were killed and several pieces of equipment were destroyed.   

  Ukrainian officials in the southern region said Russian forces shelled several communities in the region.  “The enemy continues to defend and tries to hold the occupied lines,” said the Operational Command of Ukraine South.  It also claimed that a Russian attack helicopter was shot down in the Kherson region.   

  Much of the fighting takes place in open, flat countryside west of the Dnipro River.   

  Amid the fighting, civilians are still fleeing Kherson.  According to the Ukrainian side, people are being driven from their homes and forced to cross to the eastern bank of the Dnipro River.   

“The occupiers are evicting people en masse from their homes,” according to Vitaly Kim, head of the Mykolayiv regional administration. 

  “The bottom line is that they settle their people only in houses where there are good conditions – water, natural gas, electricity.  What does he look like?  First, that it will be there for a long time.  Second, they provide better conditions for their mobilisers than they have at home,” Kim said on Telegram.   

  “The Russians, at the expense of the civilian population of the Kherson region, create living conditions for their mobilized people so that they like living there.  They are going to create a quasi-militarized zone on the eastern bank of the Dnipro, a kind of isolation near Crimea.”   

  Some background: Russian forces have been evacuating civilians from Kherson while bolstering defenses in the region, a move that some humanitarian agencies have said amounts to human rights violations.