A destroyed building in Khasivyar, Bakhmut district, eastern Ukraine. As winter approaches, high-rise residential buildings in the war zone will become uninhabitable. They have neither heating nor electricity.
Photo: Miguel Medin/AFP/SCANPIX
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Ukraine has begun the mandatory evacuation of civilians from the Donetsk region, which was publicly announced last Saturday. The authorities have stated that it concerns approximately 270 thousand inhabitants – 220 thousand adults and 50 thousand children. The purpose of the evacuation is both to protect civilians from hostilities and the fact that the cities and villages of the Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk region will not actually be habitable already in the fall.
Otherwise you will freeze
The first train of evacuees within the framework of the campaign from Donetsk reached the central Ukrainian city of Kropivnitsa yesterday morning.
“Mandatory evacuation from Donetsk region has begun. Women, children, elderly people, people with limited mobility. We welcomed and accommodated everyone, we helped everyone,” Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Irina Vereshchuk, who is also the minister for the reintegration of temporarily occupied territories, wrote on her “Telegram” channel.
Vereshchuk is in charge of the evacuation, heading the Coordination Staff of the Ukrainian government, which was formed on July 29 and includes representatives of ministries, law enforcement agencies and military administrations.
Citizens are supposed to be taken to the central and western regions of Ukraine. Evacuees will receive certificates confirming their status as ‘internally displaced persons’.
It is not the first time that local officials, members of the government, as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, have called on the stubborn to leave their homes in the war zone. This time it was done more insistently.
As Vereshchuk emphasized, the natural gas pipeline system in the Donetsk region has been destroyed. It is not possible to heat multi-story residential buildings in cities and villages.
The people who remain there are at risk of freezing in the winter, even if the hostilities turn out in favor of Ukraine, because the repair crews would not be physically able to complete the restoration work in a short time. The network of gas stations and filling stations has also been practically destroyed. It will be very difficult or even impossible to get fuel for cars.
“Those who will evacuate should call the administration or write to online counseling sites. The military administration of the region will record everything and come to these people, pick them up, transport them to the evacuation point. It will be by car or train. They will be welcomed at the station, provided with first aid and financial support.
“Ukrainian Post” already knows how to do it. There is money. We have taken into account all the errors of past evacuation waves. We understand that someone does not want to evacuate. But that is personal responsibility. I say again: there will be no gas, no heating, no light,” the Deputy Prime Minister called at the weekend.
Ukrainian President Zelensky joined her request in his address from Saturday to Sunday, appealing to the very large number of Donetsk residents who have so far refused to leave: “The decision [aizbraukt no Doneckas apgabala] you will have to accept anyway. Trust me. And the sooner you do it, the more people will leave Donetsk region now, the less the Russian army will have time to kill.
If you have the chance, please talk to those who still remain in the war zone in Donbass. Please convince them that it is necessary to leave, especially if they are families with children.
Everything is organized with full accompaniment, full assistance. Only the decision of the people themselves is needed. We are not Russia, every life is important to us.”
Mandatory evacuation is provided for by the Civil Defense Code of Ukraine, and there is no question of voluntary evacuation. The services do not have the right to take people away by force, but those who remain will have to sign a confirmation that they personally take responsibility for the fate of themselves, their children and loved ones.
The war will not stop
The evacuation campaign has been launched as the US think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reports on the Russian army’s efforts to advance in the Bakhmut district of the Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk region.
Experts question whether the Russians will succeed in capturing Bakhmut, and the pressure on nearby Slavyansk and Siversk has also eased, as Russia has had to transfer part of its troops to the Zaporizhia region, closer to the Kherson region in the south of Ukraine, because the Ukrainian counter-offensive is slowly but persistently developing there.
This does not mean that the Russians will abandon their attacks in Eastern Ukraine and the bombing of populated areas. They may become smaller in scale, but more intense.
Civilians will still be at risk. Russia’s goal is to acquire as much land as possible before the autumn “referendum” on the annexation of the occupied territories to the Russian Federation.
According to this week’s estimates by the UN High Commission on Human Rights, at least 5,327 civilians have lost their lives and 7,257 have been injured in the war in Ukraine since the end of February.
The actual numbers are certainly much higher. Most of the dead and injured were in Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Eastern Ukraine. In addition, the number of casualties in the territory controlled by Ukrainian troops is more than ten times higher than the civilian casualties on the opposite side of the front.
Civilians are mostly killed by heavy artillery, salvo systems and airstrikes.
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