The head of the Russian occupation administration in Kherson has spoken of plans to move up to 60,000 people across the Dnieper River and then into Russia as Moscow attempts to cling to the captured city before a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The Kremlin-installed occupation official Vladimir Saldo said Russia would transport 50,000-60,000 people to the Dnieper’s east bank – and then to Russia – at a rate of 10,000 people each day. “We are not going to surrender the city,” he said in a nationally televised interview on Wednesday.

Yet the mass removal of civilians would set the stage for just that. Kherson, the second-largest population centre in Ukraine captured by Russia during the war, is on the Dnieper’s west bank. Both civilians and the Russian occupation administration will be removed from the city. People would not be allowed to enter the Kherson region for seven days, officials said.

Residents are under pressure to leave the city. A number have reported receiving mass text messages warning the city will be shelled and informing them that buses will be leaving from the port from 7am. Workers such as teachers and doctors are also being told to leave the city.

“I am not planning to go anywhere,” one local resident, Svetlana, told the Guardian. “They are trying to sow panic but we aren’t buying it. I don’t believe Ukraine is going to bomb us. We are staying put.”

Russian television footage showed hundreds of people gathered at the port on Wednesday morning waiting to be removed. Russian officials have promised to help them buy property in mainland Russia, suggesting they are not planning for a return of civilians to the city in the foreseeable future.

Russia’s army would remain in Kherson, its leadership said, although the head of its invasion force, Gen Sergei Surovikin, hinted in an interview that his forces may also be forced to retreat. “I repeat: [the situation] is already very difficult today,” he said. “We will act consciously, in a timely manner. I do not exclude the adoption of the most difficult decisions.”

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Saldo said the movement of civilians would be tied to a decision “to build sizeable defensive fortifications to repulse any attack”. “There is no place for civilians where the military is operating,” he wrote. “Let the Russian army fulfil its task.”

Russian forces appeared to have resumed aerial attacks on Kyiv on Wednesday, with locals reporting explosions from anti-air defence systems in the skies over the Ukrainian capital.

Local occupation officials have warned of a coming Ukrainian counteroffensive in the area. “The battle for Kherson will begin in the very near future,” said Kirill Stremousov, the Russian-installed deputy administrator of the Kherson region. “The civilian population is advised, if possible, to leave the area of the upcoming fierce hostilities.”

The warnings are an attempt to avoid a repeat of the situation in Kharkiv region, where the Russian military was criticised for its chaotic retreat and in many cases leaving behind local Ukrainians who had collaborated with the Russian occupation governments.

Kherson is the capital of one of the four provinces Russia claimed to annex amid much fanfare after sham referendums last month. Since then Ukraine’s advance has meant none of the provinces are under full Russian control.

A Ukrainian presidential adviser noted that just a month after the “pompous announcement of Kherson annexation” the city was being “ceremoniously evacuated in anticipation of [Ukrainian] justice”. “Reality can hurt if you live in a fictional fantasy world,” wrote Mykhailo Podolyak.

Vladimir Putin is also expected to hold a meeting of his security council on Wednesday. The former president Dmitry Medvedev is expected to give a statement on migration and national security. Some Russian pundits have suggested there could be plans to institute martial law or another wartime regime, although such predictions have proven unfounded in the past.