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Ukrainian officials on Wednesday told the remaining residents of the eastern Donetsk province to leave for safer areas after Russia launched fresh attacks in a bid to take full control of the industrialized Donbass region.
“Russia has turned the entire Donetsk region into a war zone, where the stay of civilians is dangerous”, Donetsk regional military administrator Pavlo Kyrylenko told Ukrainian media. “I call on everyone to evacuate”, he said. “Evacuation saves lives”he added.
Russia already controls 55% of Donetsk province after it said it had taken full control of neighboring Luhansk province in recent days. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that one of the main goals of the attack on Ukraine is full control of its eastern sector, the mainly Russian-speaking Donbas region that includes the two provinces. Russia began its attack on Ukraine about four months ago.
Some Ukrainians are resisting calls to leave Donetsk, but Mr. Kyrylenko said only about 340,000 people remain there out of the region’s nearly 1.7 million residents before the war began.
Only about 23,000 people are still in Sloviansk, one of the latest targets of Russian bombing, out of a pre-war population of about 107,000, the city’s mayor, Vadim Lyakh, said. Increased Russian attacks have increased the pace of evacuations.
Ukrainian railway officials said they would increase the number of trains to facilitate evacuations.
Ukrainian officials said Russian attacks in the past 24 hours killed at least 8 civilians and wounded 25 others, while pro-Russian separatists said attacks by Ukrainian forces killed four civilians. Ukraine said most of the casualties in its ranks were the result of Russian attacks in Donetsk.
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