Moscow-appointed authorities have fled the capital of southern Ukraine’s Kherson region along with tens of thousands of residents as Ukrainian forces attacked Russia’s hold on the city Thursday while fighting also intensified in the country’s east.

Amid the battles, a senior Russian official warned that western commercial satellites used for military purposes in support of Ukraine were a “legitimate target for a retaliatory strike”.

Ukraine has pushed ahead with an offensive to reclaim the Kherson region and its capital of the same name, which Russian forces captured during the first days of a war now in its ninth month.

More than 70,000 residents from the Kherson city area have evacuated in recent days, the region’s Kremlin-installed governor, Vladimir Saldo, said Thursday.

Members of the Russia-backed regional administration were included in the evacuation, the deputy governor, Kirill Stremousov said. Monuments to Russian heroes were moved, along with the remains of Grigory Potemkin, the Russian general who founded Kherson in the 18th century, that were kept at the city’s St Catherine’s Church.

Ukrainian forces were surrounding Kherson from the west and attacking Russia’s foothold on the west bank of the Dnieper river, which divides the region and the country.

In eastern Ukraine, Russian forces continued to bombard the Donetsk region city of Bakhmut, making slow gains towards the centre.

Amid the heavy combat on two fronts, a Russian official warned that the West could become part of the conflict.

The deputy head of Russia’s delegation at a UN arms control panel, Konstantin Vorontsov, described the use of US and other western commercial satellites for military purposes during the fighting in Ukraine as “extremely dangerous”.

“The quasi-civilian infrastructure could be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike” Vorontsov warned without elaborating.

As they have all month, Russian forces carried out attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that have caused increasing worry ahead of winter.

A Russian drone attack early on Thursday hit an energy facility near the capital, causing a fire, said Kyiv region governor Oleksiy Kuleba. He said in a video statement that the latest attacks inflicted “very serious damage”.

“The Russians are using drones and missiles to destroy Ukraine’s energy system ahead of the winter and terrorize civilians,” Kuleba said in televised remarks.

Kuleba announced new rolling blackouts and urged consumers to save power. He said authorities were still pondering over specifics of the blackouts needed to restore the damaged power facilities.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said rolling blackouts would also be introduced in Chernihiv, Cherkasy and Zhytomyr regions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Russian attacks have already destroyed 30 per cent of the country’s energy infrastructure. In a likely response to Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, a power plant was attacked just outside Sevastopol, a port in the Russian-annexed region of Crimea. The plant suffered minor damage in a drone attack.