On Saturday, Vitaly Gur, the Moscow-based deputy head of the town of Nova Kakhovka, near Kherson, was shot as he left his apartment building. He died on the way to the hospital in Crimea, according to Russian media. Investigators reportedly found spent shell casings from a Makarov semi-automatic pistol near Gur’s home. The trusty Makarov pistol was the standard sidearm for the Soviet military, KGB agents and police. “He is dead, as far as I know,” said Vladimir Leontiev, head of the pro-Russian collaborationist government of the Kherson region. “He was in the hospital. Military doctors tried to save his life.” Nova Kakhovka, a town of about 45,000 on the south bank of the Dnipro River, is a vital hub for Russian efforts to resupply the city of Kherson, 35 miles down the north bank of the river.
Ukrainians intensify attacks on pro-Russians
It comes a day after the city’s pro-Russian mayor suddenly became so ill that he had to be put into a coma. Vladimir Saldo was sent to Crimea and later transferred to the Sklifosovsky Emergency Research Institute in Moscow for toxicological tests. Russian news reports differed on what Mr. Saldo was suffering from. Some said he had suffered a stroke, others that he was sick with Covid. Opposition media reported that he had been poisoned. In the past two months, saboteurs and assassins have increased their attacks in the Kherson region. In June, car bombs killed the associate head of the prison service and a senior pro-Russian civilian government official. In July, a bomb blew up a car with two police officers inside, reportedly killing one. The killings come as Ukraine prepares for an offensive to retake the strategic region. Russian forces seized the region, which is next to Crimea, without a fight in the first days of the war. Fighting has stopped in Donbas, previously the focus. Instead, the UK Ministry of Defense said efforts were shifting south, where the war was entering a “new phase” along a 225-mile front line. There, Ukrainian forces have rammed bridges over the Dnipro River, vital to Russian supply lines to the city of Kherson. To counter this, Russia has sent thousands of additional troops as reinforcements. “Large convoys of Russian military trucks, tanks, towed artillery and other weapons continue to leave the Donbas region of Ukraine and head southwest,” the Foreign Ministry said.
