Volodymyr Zelensky called on residents of the Donetsk region to evacuate to escape “Russian terror”, while an unprecedented drone attack targeted the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea on Sunday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky 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 Moscow’s control, while an unprecedented attack in drone targeted the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea on Sunday.
“A government decision has been made on the mandatory evacuation of the Donetsk region,” Zelensky said in a video address on Saturday evening. “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.
“We heard powerful explosions”
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, in charge of the operation.
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.
On the southern front, in the night from Saturday to Sunday, the city of Mykolaiv was heavily hit by bombardments, “probably the strongest ever”, according to its mayor. “We heard powerful explosions between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. Residential buildings were damaged. Several fires broke out at the affected sites,” Oleksandr Senkevych said on Telegram.
On Sunday morning, the governor of the city of Sevastopol, in the Crimean peninsula annexed by Moscow, announced that the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet had been attacked using a drone, making five injured. “This morning, Ukrainian nationalists decided to spoil Russian Fleet Day for us” celebrated in Russia on Sunday, Mikhail Razvozjayev wrote on Telegram.
He said a drone had landed in the courtyard of the Fleet Headquarters and had exploded, injuring five employees of the staff. All Russian Fleet Day festivities “have been canceled for security reasons,” Razvojayev said.
Extensive celebrations are planned for this holiday across Russia, including a naval parade in Saint Petersburg (northwest), which is to be overseen by President Vladimir Putin.
Prisoners tortured and executed
On Friday, the bombing of a barracks housing Ukrainian soldiers prisoners in Olenivka, in territory occupied by the Russians in the Donetsk region, left around 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 in May oversaw the surrender negotiated with the Russians of the defenders of the Azovstal plant in Mariupol (southeast), to go to Olenivka.
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”, declared Friday evening Mr. Zelensky, calling on the UN and the Red Cross to “react”.
The Russian Investigative Committee had announced the shelling of Olenivka on Friday, saying that Ukrainian forces had themselves “fired on the prison where members of the Azov battalion are being held, using American projectiles of the Himars system”. The Ukrainian general staff dismissed these accusations, saying that it was for the Russian or separatist forces to “camouflage 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. .
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.