KHERSON, November 2. /TASS/. A process of the evacuation of people from the right bank of the Dnieper River in the Kherson Region has been concluded and the local administration opted to suspend all traffic movement across the Dnieper River, the region’s administration announced on Wednesday.
"In connection with the competition of evacuation measures from the territory of the right bank of the Dnieper, as well as in regard to increased military threats aimed against the civilian population, the administration of the Kherson Region made a decision to halt the movement of civilian transportation across the Dnieper," the administration announced in a statement posted on its Telegram channel.
According to the statement, an issued ban to cross the Dnieper River is also in effect to the use of river boats, tugboats and other means of river navigation. A local pontoon ferry was also closed indefinitely.
Kherson Region acting governor, Vladimir Saldo, said on October 18 that people living on the Dnieper right bank would be relocated to the left bank due to the risk of flooding triggered by Ukraine’s attack on the Kakhovka hydropower plant. On October 31, he said that the evacuation zone on the left-bank part of the region would be expanded to a distance of 15 kilometers from the Dnieper.
From September 23 to September 27, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic as well as the Kherson Region and the Zaporozhye Region held a referendum where the majority of voters opted to join Russia.
On September 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the heads of the DPR, the LPR, and the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions signed treaties on their accession to Russia. Later, the State Duma and the Federation Council (the lower and upper houses of Russia’s parliament) approved legislation on ratifying these treaties, as well as federal constitutional laws on the accession of the four regions to Russia.