Pokrovsk: Parents hide children from forced evacuations as Ukraine says Russia rapidly advances on key city

CNN
—

Parents are hiding their children from local authorities to avoid forced evacuation in the strategically important eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, amid warnings of rapid advances by Russian forces.

Authorities have urged communities in and around Pokrovsk to flee over the next two weeks as Russian forces advance – despite a Ukrainian push into Russian territory that caught Moscow by surprise.

Russia said on Thursday it had foiled another Ukrainian attempt to advance into the Bryansk border region, as Ukraine continued to advance in the Kursk region.

In Ukraine’s Donetsk region, children with their parents or other legal guardians will be forcibly evacuated from certain areas, including Pokrovsk, according to the ministry responsible for reintegrating formerly Russian-controlled areas.

Pokrovsk is not a large city – it had about 60,000 residents before the war, and many have left since the full-scale invasion began. But it is a major hub for the Ukrainian military, thanks to easy access to Kostyantynivka, another military hub.

The Ukrainian military said on Wednesday that it Pokrovsk is now the “hottest front” of the war, with troops repelling Russian attacks and fighting in multiple locations.

The entire community includes the city of Pokrovsk, the nearby town of Myrnohrad and 39 surrounding villages, according to the Pokrovsk city military administration.

The administration said about 600 to 700 people were being evacuated daily. On Thursday, the national railway network said at least 371 people had been evacuated from Prokrovsky by train, and the network had to add nine carriages to accommodate the large crowds.

“Don’t wait. Things won’t get better, they will get worse. Leave,” was the stark warning from local official Yuri Tretiak, head of the military administration in the town of Myrnohrad, now less than three miles from the front line.

But Tretiak said many remain reluctant to leave — even going so far as to hide their children from local authorities and encourage the military administration to make home visits.

“We have cases where parents hide their children. Today (August 20) we will have a meeting with the police to discuss how we will work with these people, how we will search for these parents who hide children and give false information that the children left long ago,” he said, noting that the risks are increasing with some areas of the city being subjected to daily attacks.

“Those who hesitated a week ago have mostly decided to leave en masse,” he said, noting that “the most common argument for residents who have not yet evacuated their homes is: ‘I have nowhere to go’ or ‘nobody needs me’.”

“The enemy is advancing faster than expected. So we are trying to do our best to evacuate people by the end of the week,” Tretiak said in a radio interview on Tuesday.

Ukrainian forces are using the road linking the two countries to resupply the front lines and evacuate casualties towards Dnipro.

Among those leaving Pokrovsk are children. One of the departing passengers, Kateryna, is scheduled to leave the city with her teenage son and young daughter, according to a statement from the Ukrainian Railways.

“I have lived here for 30 years since I was born,” she said in the statement. “Can you imagine what it would be like to live here your whole life and then suddenly have to give up everything?”

As communities in and around Pokrovsk remain under fire, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Thursday that Russian forces had occupied the village of Mezhov in eastern Ukraine as part of their ongoing offensive in the region.

The ministry claimed that units of the Center Group of the Russian Armed Forces took control of the village of Mezhov in the Donetsk region, which was illegally annexed by Russia. The Ukrainian military did not comment on the situation in the village.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces are being reinforced in the eastern region to repel any possible Russian advance.

“The front line is our position, primarily the Pokrovsk direction, our Donetsk region. We understand the enemy’s movements and are strengthening ourselves,” Zelensky said in his evening address.

Meanwhile, Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian incursion attempt into the Bryansk border region on Wednesday, according to the local governor.

“On August 21, an attempt to infiltrate from the Dominican Democratic Republic into the territory of the Russian Federation was thwarted in the Klimovsky district of the Bryansk region,” regional governor Alexander Bogomaz said on his official Telegram channel on Thursday.

Bogomaz said that Russian Federal Security Service forces and military units responded to the Ukrainian attempt to breach the border, adding that the area where the clashes took place is now stable and under Russian control.

Ukraine has not commented on the alleged incursion.

Ukraine has previously targeted the Bryansk region in operations it has launched since its incursion into Russia more than two weeks ago.

Ukraine’s bold advance across the border in Russia’s Kursk region has left Kyiv’s forces in control of more than 1,000 square kilometres (386 square miles) of Russian territory and destroyed key bridges in the western part of the country.

The attack, which is a major embarrassment for the Kremlin, represents a marked change in tactics for Kiev, marking the first time foreign forces have entered Russian territory since World War II.