- The Ukrainian government claimed in a statement on Tuesday that Russian soldiers are making it more difficult for citizens to flee.
- “As a result, only a small number of people managed to leave in almost a month. Earlier, the same amount of people left over one or two days,” the statement said.
Russian forces are making it more difficult for citizens to flee the controlled territories by preventing evacuation vehicles from leaving several districts. The Ukrainian government claimed in a statement on Tuesday.
“At the moment, evacuation is too hard. The opportunity to leave temporally occupied territories is almost exhausted,” according to the Ministry for Reintegration of the Temporary Occupied Territories. “The occupiers have actually stopped allowing evacuation vehicles to leave the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. They put up all kinds of obstacles: they demand licenses from drivers, use the fingerprinting procedure, check all documents, phones, cars, and so on.
“As a result, only a small number of people managed to leave in almost a month. Earlier, the same amount of people left over one or two days,” the statement said.
Ivan Fedorov, the exiled mayor of Russian-held Melitopol, claimed in a post on Telegram earlier on Tuesday that only 139 people had been permitted to travel from the occupied regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk to the city of Zaporizhzhia on Monday, while on Sunday they “did not release a single person.”
A crucial route for evacuating residents from occupied territory has been the road through the checkpoint at Vasylivka that is controlled by the Russians.
“I remind residents that there are alternative ways to leave: via Crimea or via Novoazovsk in the Donetsk region,” Fedorov said. “The road may take a long time but given the risk of death in the occupied territories, it is necessary to evacuate.”
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he was annexing four regions of Ukraine, which is against international law, only a small number of individuals have been able to exit Russian-occupied territory through Vasylivka, according to media reports earlier this month.
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