EDITOR’S PICK
EKO HOT BLOG reports that the Governor of Donetsk has called on 350,000 Ukrainian residents to flee as Russian troops escalated their offensive.
The governor made the plea Tuesday after Russia declared it had seized the neighbouring Luhansk province.
Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko urged civilians to evacuate the province to save lives and to enable the Ukrainian army to better defend towns from the Russian onslaught.
The governor’s call for people in Donetsk to leave the province appears to represent one of the biggest suggested evacuations of the war, which has already displaced more than 7.1 million Ukrainians within the country and led a further 4.8 million to leave the country, according to the UN.
“The destiny of the whole country will be decided by the Donetsk region,” Kyrylenko said on Tuesday.
“Once there are less people, we will be able to concentrate more on our enemy and perform our main tasks,” he said.
The governor said that Russia’s “number one target” is currently the cities Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, in part because of critical infrastructure in the towns, such as water filtration centres.
Kryrylenko added that as Russian missile and artillery raids on residential areas intensified, more people were leaving.
He described shelling as “very chaotic” and without “a specific target … only to destroy civilian infrastructure and residential areas”.
The call for a mass evacuation follows one day after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared victory in the neighbouring province of Luhansk after months of gruelling warfare for control of the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, during which both sides lost many service members.
FURTHER READING:
Donetsk and Luhansk together comprise the Donbas, the industrialised eastern part of Ukraine that has seen the most significant battle in Europe for generations. Russia says it wants to take control of the entire Donbas region.
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