Ukraine’s Zelenskyy orders mandatory evacuation of Donetsk region

Lviv, Ukraine, Jul 31 (EFE).- Ukraine’s government ordered the mandatory evacuation of the Donetsk region, east of the country, which in recent days has been the target of harsh military attacks of the armed conflict with Russia.

In a speech broadcast Saturday night on the presidential Telegram channel, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told all citizens to evacuate Donetsk for themselves and said they would have full logistical and economic assistance.

“Trust me. The sooner they do it, the more people leave the Donetsk region now, the less time the Russian army will have to kill people,” he said, adding that there were still “hundreds of thousands of people, tens of thousands of children,” who refused to leave.

Zelenskyy repeated the recognition that several countries have made of Russia as a terrorist state, especially the United States, “more as an effective defense of the free world than as a political gesture.”

Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk military administration, reported Saturday that over the last month a total of 662 people have died in the region as a result of Russian attacks and that another 1,711 were injured.

Kyiv reported a death in an attack of 50 Ukrainian prisoners in a prison of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic located in the town of Yelenovka (also known as Olenivka, in Ukrainian), while Moscow strongly denies it and blames Ukraine for the attack. EFE

nch-cd/lds