MHMarkets:Donetsk residents urged to evacuate as fighting rages in eastern Ukraine

 Ukrainian officials are urging the remaining residents of the Donetsk region to evacuate to safer areas as Russian troops move closer to eastern territory. Commenting on the missile attack in Toretsk on Wednesday, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk Regional Military Administration, said: Russia has turned the entire Donetsk region into a Dangerous hotspots.

Ukraine still controls 45 percent of Donetsk, but after taking over Lysichansk in the neighboring Luhansk region, Russian troops are now advancing towards Kramatorsk and Slovensk. Vadym Liakh, head of the Slovak military-civilian administration, said the restarted strike had accelerated the pace of evacuation, but most people had already left the city.

“Those who witnessed [what happened in Severo-Donetsk or Lysichansk] left a long time ago,” Liach said. “Now about 23,000 inhabitants of Slovakia (about 100,000 people) remain in the city, willing to The number of people leaving has increased. We are evacuating in two directions: to Lviv, Dnipro or Rovna.”

Due to increased passenger traffic leaving Donetsk, Ukrainian Railways said it would add additional wagons to facilitate the movement of people.

Most have already left the Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk region, although some have rejected calls for officials to evacuate. According to Kyrylenko, only about 340,000 people — more than 1.6 million before the war — still exist. “It's hard to convince people to evacuate,” Kyrylenko said on Friday. “We've been working on it. People are starting to leave more aggressively because of the chaotic shelling of civilian infrastructure.”

After taking over the last Ukrainian-controlled city in the Luhansk region, Russian troops are preparing to continue their march towards the Donetsk city still controlled by Kyiv, Ukraine's military general staff said on Monday. Slovensk and Kramatorsk are the two largest population centers in the region. After capturing Lysichansk, Russian troops now control almost the entire Luhansk region, barring a few resistance.

The eastern region of Luhansk has not yet been fully occupied by Russian troops, and fighting continues in a settlement on the outskirts of the region, Sheryl Hayday, head of the Luhansk Regional Military Administration, said on Wednesday. Hayday said the Russian military had suffered “huge losses” in equipment and personnel. For more than four months, Russian troops have been trying to control the Luhansk region. Hospitals in occupied areas of the region are crowded with seriously wounded Russian soldiers. It is believed that Russian troops are trying to launch an offensive against the cities of Slovensk and Bakhmut in the Donetsk region.

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