A city waits Russians loot Kherson as battle lines are redrawn

Things are disappearing in the Ukrainian city of Kherson at a rapid rate. Russian troops are taking away ambulances, tractors and stolen private cars. Cultural things are going too: archives, and paintings and sculptures from museums. Even the bones of Catherine the Great's friend and lover, Grigory Potemkin, have been grubbed up from a crypt in St Catherine's cathedral and spirited away.

- Luke Harding KYIV

Russian soldiers are ferrying this loot across the Dnieper river, to the left bank of the Kherson region. They have also been deporting local citizens under the guise of a humanitarian rescue mission. Others have refused to leave. A round-the-clock curfew has been introduced. Nobody knows how many of Kherson's 300,000 prewar inhabitants remain. According to relatives of those still there, the city is mostly empty, its ghostly fate likely to be decided over the next few weeks in a series of bloody battles.

Last Thursday, the Russian flag was taken down from Kherson's neoclassical regional state administration building. The gesture prompted speculation that Moscow was about to abandon the city, which it seized in early March, paving the way for the Ukrainian army's triumphant return.

Locals are unconvinced by Moscow's machinations. "It's probably a trick," Alyona Lapchuk said. "The Russians are dressing up as civilians and hiding in houses." Lapchuk, who left Kherson in April, said it was more likely Russian troops were preparing for bitter street-to-street fighting over the autumn and winter. If this strategy failed, the Russian army would probably "destroy" Kherson, in much the same way it flattened Mariupol, killing tens of thousands of civilians, she suggested.

Ukrainian officials were sceptical, too, that Moscow was exiting after nine months. They said newly mobilised Russian troops were creating defensive positions on the outskirts of Kherson, at the same time that checkpoints in neighbouring Chornobaivka and Stepanovka were being abandoned.

"It's difficult to understand what exactly is the Russian intention," Serhii Khlan, the deputy head of Kherson's regional council, said.