Ukrainian officials continue to call on the remaining residents still in the Donetsk region to evacuate to safer areas, as Russian forces inch closer to those territories.Ukraine still controls 45% of the region but after taking over Lysychansk, Russian forces are pushing towards Kramatorsk and Slovyansk. The head of the Sloviansk military-civilian administration, Vadym Liakh, says renewed strikes have increased the pace of evacuations but says most people had already left the city.Those who saw [what happened in Severodonetsk or Lysychansk] left long time ago. Now there are approximately 23,000 residents of Sloviansk [out of around 100,000] which remain in the city, Liakh said. The number of people willing to leave has increased. We are working on evacuation in two directions: to Lviv, Dnipro or Rivne.Due to the increase in the flow of passengers leaving Donetsk, Ukrainian railways, Ukrzaliznytsia, said it would add additional wagons to facilitate the movement of people.Although some people continue to resist the calls from officials to evacuate, most left the Ukrainian controlled Donestk region already. The Ukrainian head of the regional military administration Pavlo Kyrylenko said on Friday that only around 340,000 people, out of 1,670,000 before the war, remained in Donestk.It is difficult to persuade people to evacuate, Kyrylenko said on Friday, We are working on that all the time. People are starting to leave more actively, as there is chaotic shelling of civilian infrastructure.
A woman who was severely injured by Thursday’s Russian missile strikes on the central Ukrainian town of Vinnytsia still doesn’t know that her child died in the attack, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the office of the President of Ukraine.
Doctors are unable to tell the mother, Irina, that her 4-year-old daughter Liza has died because of her challenging medical situation and how the news could affect her recovery, Tymoshenko told CNN during a visit to the hospital where Irina is being treated.
“She is with a mask, that is why we don’t speak to her. We come for a few seconds, and came out from there,” he added.
At least 23 people died in the strikes, including three children, and many more are still unaccounted for, according to Ukrainian authorities.
“It’s really terrible, it’s many people,” Tymoshenko said Friday. “It’s really horrible. I don’t know how to explain. Because there is no war, no war objects, there were civilian objects. And in one moment, rockets come to them.”
The attack was carried out with Russian “Kalibr” cruise missiles launched from submarines stationed in the Black Sea, Tymoshenko said on Thursday.
Prosecutors on Thursday collected Liza’s pink stroller from the sidewalk, where the mother and daughter stood at the moment the strikes hit.
