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Ukrainian authorities have ordered residents near the eastern front line to evacuate ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, as Moscow continues its offensive 10 days aVsceker Kiev’s cross-border incursion.
While Ukrainian troops are trying to conquer more Russian territory in the Kursk region, where they claim to control about 1,150 square kilometers, Russia has made steady progress in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
Serhiy Dobriak, head of the military administration of the city of Pokrovsk, said that people should leave while there was still time, as Russian forces had advanced 10 km from the city.
“Don’t delay!” Dobriak said on Telegram. “The enemy is ruthlessly targeting critical infrastructure and residential areas.”
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Russian-appointed authorities in the occupied regional capital, Donetsk, said a Ukrainian missile targeted a shopping mall that was set on fire on Friday. They said at least two people were killed and 11 were injured.
The Financial Times could not independently verify the video posted on pro-Russian Telegram channels.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces declined to comment on the incident.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said Thursday that Russian forces were “maintaining their relatively high offensive tempo in the Donetsk region, demonstrating that the Russian military command continues to prioritize the advance in eastern Ukraine.”
According to Deepstate, a military analytics agency tied to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, Moscow’s forces made advances on the cities of Pokrovsk and Toretsk on Wednesday and occupied parts of New York.
About 60,000 people remained in the greater Pokrovsk region, the city administration told the Financial Times. It especially encouraged families with children to evacuate ahead of any hostilities, “calmly and without panic.”
“We are not seeing a large influx of people leaving, but little by little we are noticing a trend,” said Kateryna Yanuzhla, press officer of Pokrovsk.
“Once the enemy is within 10 km of Pokrovsk, the children will be forcibly evacuated,” he said, referring to a decree introduced by Ukraine last year that allows local police to evacuate children from active conflict zones even if their families refuse to leave.
Local governments in cities under threat of occupation have long struggled to convince residents to evacuate. Some are afraid to leave their homes and move elsewhere, while others are bedridden or have mobility problems due to old age.
In the cities of Toretsk and nearby New York, some of which are now occupied by Russian forces, there are still 3,500 residents living mostly in basements, according to Vasyl Chinchyk, head of the Toretsk city administration.
He said they were only able to evacuate about 20 people a day because of mobile network problems, shelling, destroyed roads and Russian drones.
U.S. officials said Thursday there were reports that Russia was moving units from Ukraine to Kursk, but did not specify how many, from where or which units.
Analysts say one of the goals of Kiev’s cross-border incursion that began on August 6 was to divert Russian troops from Donetsk, but it is not yet clear to what extent that could be achieved. Ukraine has rotated some of its most elite forces from the eastern front to Kursk, raising concerns about its ability to hold positions in Donetsk.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has promised to devote the same resources and manpower to the Eastern Front as were used for the Kursk operation.
“Let us not forget our Eastern Front for a second,” he said earlier this week.
Another goal of Operation Kursk is to secure a better deal in any future talks with Russia, with Ukrainian officials saying they are not interested in holding on to occupied territories beyond a “due process of negotiation.”
More information from Christopher Miller in Kiev
Cartography by Aditi Bhandari
