SEVERODONETSK: (Ukraine): Desperate evacuation attempts from eastern Ukraine were under way Thursday as authorities warned of an imminent Russian offensive, following the devastation around Kyiv that has shocked the world.
Russian troops have been withdrawing from around the capital and Ukraine’s north, leaving a trail of destruction behind them, as they prepare for an expected assault on the country’s southeast.
The scenes of carnage left behind by retreating troops in towns like Bucha have caused outrage and led to a wave of fresh sanctions against Moscow.
But on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Moscow was undeterred and continued “to accumulate fighting force to realise their ill ambitions in (eastern) Donbas”.
“They are preparing to resume an active offensive,” he said.
Begging civilians to leave the region “while it is still possible”, local officials in Donbas’ Lugansk and Donetsk said the region was already facing constant indiscriminate shelling.
“We can see clearly that before the enemy goes to full attack, they will just destroy places completely,” local governor Sergiy Gaiday in Lugansk told Ukrainian broadcaster Channel 24.
Gaiday said on Facebook that more than 1,200 people had been evacuated from Lugansk on Wednesday, but that efforts were being hampered by artillery fire, with some areas already inaccessible.
For those that unable to leave, he said, tonnes of food, medicine and hygiene products were being delivered as part of a massive humanitarian effort.
The head of the Donetsk Regional Military Administration said strikes had targeted aid points.
“The enemy aimed directly there with a goal to destroy the civilians,” Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote on Facebook.
He added that people were heeding calls to flee and he would be coordinating evacuation to make it “faster and more effective.”
