Evacuation of over 200,000 Donetsk residents begins

The arrival in the city of Kropivnitskyi of a train with hundreds of people from Donetsk symbolized on Tuesday the start of the macro-operation launched by the Government to save the more than 200,000 residents of this region of eastern Ukraine. The president, Voldímir Zelenski, insisted to the population that it is necessary to leave Donbas as soon as possible, the epicenter of the fighting between Russian forces and the kyiv Army.

“The mandatory evacuation of Donetsk has started. The first train has arrived this morning at Kropivnitskyi. There are women, children, the elderly and others with reduced or very limited mobility. Everyone has to be accommodated and given help,” said Irina Vereshchuk, the deputy prime minister and head of the Reintegration of the Occupied Territories, in a message on Telegram. She also recalled that the operation must be completed before winter given the almost total destruction of the heating supply infrastructure due to the fighting.

Zelensky, who closely follows the transfer of the Donetsk population to safe areas, yesterday asked NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg for more weapons “as soon as possible” to carry out a major counteroffensive against Russian troops. Stoltenberg described the conversation with Zelensky as “good” and reaffirmed in a message posted on Twitter that “it is very important for the Alliance countries to offer Ukraine more and faster help.”

At the same time, the Russian Supreme Court on Tuesday recognized the Ukrainian Azov Battalion, an ultra-nationalist court with neo-Nazi ties, as a terrorist organization, for which its activities have been completely prohibited on Russian territory. According to Moscow troops, this group is behind numerous war crimes, including bombing residential areas, torture and killings of civilians.

The Azov Battalion has assured in a message on its Telegram channel that Russia is trying to find “new excuses and explanations” to justify its “war crimes.” For this reason, he has called on the US State Department and authorized bodies in other countries to “recognize the Russian Federation as a terrorist state.”