Ukrainian authorities have ordered the evacuation of a key town in the Donbas region as Russian forces continue to make gains in the east of the country, despite a sustained Ukrainian offensive in Russia’s Kursk region.
Officials said families with children living in Pokrovsk and surrounding villages would be forced to leave.
The head of the town’s military administration, Serhii Dobriak, said residents had at most two weeks to flee the Russian advance.
The town of Pokrovsk is strategically important as one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds and a key logistics center for the Kyiv army on the eastern front.
Donetsk region governor Vadym Filashkin said more than 53,000 people, including nearly 4,000 children, remained in the town.
He said the authorities had decided to forcibly evacuate children and their parents or guardians.
“With our city within range of almost every enemy weapon, the decision to evacuate was necessary and inevitable.”
Mr Dobriak said the rate of evacuations from the town had increased to between 500 and 600 people a day. He said while basic services continued to operate in the town, they could soon be shut down as Russian troops approached.
The evacuation order came even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his forces continued to gain ground in their offensive in Russia’s Kursk region.
Zelensky said the incursion was “achieving [its] target”, adding that many Russian prisoners of war were added to what he called an “exchange fund”.
One of the purposes of this attack is said to be to divert Russian troops from the Donbas region, reducing pressure on the besieged Ukrainian army there.
On Monday, Russian military bloggers claimed Ukraine had blown up a third bridge over the Seym River in the Kursk region. Kyiv has not claimed responsibility, but the destruction of the bridge could further hamper Russian military logistics and help Ukraine consolidate control over territory it has seized from Moscow.
But BBC Verify has identified new pontoon bridges – temporary floating bridges, built and used quickly in the absence of permanent structures – across the river, apparently built by the Russian military.
In satellite images taken on Saturday, two newly built intersections near Glushkovo can be seen.
While Russia appears committed to a strategy of “gradual advance” in the east, Ukraine’s surprise advance into Kursk shows that seizing the initiative has allowed Kyiv to make significant gains rather than gradually losing a “war of attrition,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said.
Kyiv claims to have seized nearly 1,000 square kilometers (621 square miles) of Russian territory since first invading its neighbor on August 6. In contrast, ISW estimates that Russia gained about 1,175 square kilometers (730 square miles) from January to July.
