adds elements on the planned evacuation
kyiv (awp/afp) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday evening called on residents of the Donetsk region to evacuate to escape “Russian terror” and bombardments in this territory in the east of the country, largely under the control of Moscow.
“A government decision has been made on the mandatory evacuation of the Donetsk region,” Zelensky said in an evening video address. “Please evacuate,” he demanded. “The more residents leave the Donetsk region now, the fewer people the Russian army will kill.”
“At this stage of the war, terror is Russia’s main weapon,” he said.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk had previously announced the compulsory evacuation for the entire population of Donetsk, one of the two administrative regions of the Donbass industrial basin where Russia is gaining ground.
She had justified this decision, in declarations on television, by the destruction of the gas networks and the absence of heating next winter in the region.
Russian strikes on towns in the region cause casualties among the civilian population almost every day. During the night from Saturday to Sunday, the Ukrainian army reported Russian artillery strikes, particularly in Bakhmout and Kramatorsk, near the front line.
At least 200,000 civilians still live in the territories of the Donetsk region that are not under Russian occupation, according to an estimate by the Ukrainian authorities.
“In total, there are currently about 52,000 children in the Donetsk region. The police explain to the parents that the evacuation involves providing accommodation and providing all the necessary assistance,” said the national police, responsible for the operation.
Friday, the bombardment of a barracks sheltering Ukrainian soldiers prisoners in Olenivka, in territory occupied by the Russians in the region of Donetsk, had made about fifty dead. A “deliberate Russian war crime”, according to Mr. Zelensky.
Ukrainian human rights official Dmytro Lubinetsk announced on Saturday that he had asked the Red Cross and the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission, which had supervised in May the surrender negotiated with the Russians of the defenders of the Azovstal plant in Mariupol (southeast), to go to Olenivka.
Incendiary tweet
After long weeks of siege and resistance on the steel site, around 2,500 Ukrainian fighters had surrendered and Moscow had made it known that they would be imprisoned in Olenivka.
“When the defenders of Azovstal left the factory, the UN and the ICRC acted as guarantors of the life and health of our soldiers,” Mr. Zelensky said Friday evening, calling on the UN and the Red Cross to “react”.
The European Union condemned Friday evening “the atrocities committed by the Russian armed forces and their auxiliaries”, in a press release by its head of diplomacy Josep Borrell targeting both the bombardment of the prison and accusations of torture and emasculation of a Ukrainian prisoner, a video of which circulated on social networks.
France expressed “its horror at the reports of murders and acts of torture against Ukrainian prisoners of war, in the Olenivka detention center, under the protection of the Russian Federation”, adding that the case if necessary, those responsible will have to “answer for their actions”, in a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Tension over the fate of thousands of Ukrainian prisoners of war in the hands of the Russians or Donbass separatists was further heightened by a tweet on Friday evening from the Russian Embassy in the UK, specifically targeting the Ukrainian nationalist Azov regiment, which fought at Mariupol.
“Azov fighters deserve to be executed, but not by firing squad, by hanging. They are not real soldiers. They deserve a humiliating death,” the tweet read in English.
The Russian Investigative Committee had announced the shelling of Olenivka on Friday, saying that the Ukrainian forces had themselves “fired on the prison where the members of the Azov battalion are being held, using American projectiles of the Himars system”, rocket launchers high-precision multiples delivered by the United States.
Russian public television broadcast images presented as those of charred barracks and destroyed metal bed frames, and showed blurry images of what appear to be human bodies.
The Ukrainian general staff dismissed these accusations, saying that it was a question of Russian or separatist forces “covering up the torture of prisoners and the executions” which had been “perpetrated”.
According to Ukrainian intelligence, the attack “was carried out by mercenaries from the Wagner division”, a Russian company of mercenaries whose men have been accused of crimes in Syria and Africa in particular.
As for the Ukrainian human rights officer Dmytro Lubinetsk, he affirmed that according to the analysis of the Russian video, the only element available at this stage, “the explosion occurred inside” the barracks and not after a bombardment. .
Gas and grain
Russian gas giant Gazprom announced on Saturday that it has suspended gas deliveries to Latvia.
It had already drastically reduced its deliveries to Europe this week via the Nord Stream gas pipeline, officially due to the maintenance of a turbine.
Regarding cereals blocked in Ukraine since the start of the war, the resumption of exports is still awaited and could occur “in the coming days”, according to kyiv.
According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Infrastructure, 17 ships have already been loaded with grain in Chornomorsk and Odessa, and ten are ready to leave.
Ukraine, like Russia, is one of the world’s largest grain exporters. kyiv says it wants to sell some 20 million tonnes for around 10 billion dollars as part of this agreement.
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