Sirens sounded on Friday in central Donetsk in eastern Ukraine after the pro-Russian separatist leader urged residents to leave the city and head to Russia.
Separatists in eastern Ukraine announced on Friday that they had begun withdrawing civilians to Russia, while Kiev accused pro-Russian forces in Donbass of shooting at a military border checkpoint.
Dinesh Pushlin, the leader of the separatist government in the Donetsk region, said that women, children and the elderly would be the first to be evacuated from the region, as tensions rose, and that Russia had prepared facilities to accommodate them.
To justify the evacuation, the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic condemns the increased attacks by the Ukrainian armed forces.
However, the Guardian newspaper reported that the Ukrainian foreign minister denies preparing an attack against Russia and talks about Russian disinformation.
Journalist Diogo Martins explains what is happening in the region.
Advanced information by Russian media
SIC’s envoy to Kiev, Anna Pineda Moreira, adds that this information is being broadcast by the Russian media, not by Ukraine.
He says that there is a great deal of mistrust on the part of the Ukrainian territory with this information, and says that there are those who believe that this may be “such an incident” that Russian President Vladimir Putin is looking for to justify his entry into Ukraine.
The announcement of the large-scale evacuations comes at a time when the number of ceasefire violations has increased in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said that in the past 24 hours there were 60 ceasefire violations committed by pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region.
Earlier, separatists from Donetsk region denounced a Ukrainian attack on a village overnight.
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