A train with 500 evacuees from Kharkiv region arrived at the main station in Voronezh on Sunday, September 12. Governor Alexander Gusev reported that evacuees will be accommodated in the temporary center.
“Of course the situation was [serious], we left everything behind. We took the essentials,” one of the evacuees told reporters.
Evacuee named Lyudmila, who arrived in Voronezh with her daughter, stressed she is not sure she will be able to come back, even though her husband has stayed back home.
“When we were leaving it was not [scary]. Now we do not know how and what happens next,” she said.
According to another evacuee, she claims the trip to Russian territory to be ‘very long’ and would like to return home ‘as soon as possible’.
On September 10, the head of the civil-military administration of Kharkiv Region, Vitaliy Ganchev, recommended all the residents of the local settlements to evacuate.
“The situation is quite tense around Kupyansk, Balakleya and Izyum. In general, other settlements are constantly shelled by the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” Ganchev stressed.
In turn, the Armed Forces of Ukraine General Staff stated on Monday that ‘the enemy shelled military and civilian infrastructure from tanks, mortars, barrel and rocket artillery’, in the settlements of Konstantinovka and Uda in the Kharkiv direction.
The Russian Defence Ministry reported on Monday that ‘the personnel and military equipment of the Kraken nationalist formation, the 113th Territorial Defenсe Brigade and the 93rd Mechanized Brigade were hit’ in the Kupyansk and Izum area which resulted in losses of up to 250 servicemen and over 20 units of military equipment.
Moscow launched a military offensive on Ukraine in late February after recognising the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics’ independence (DPR and LPR).
Kiev has denounced the Russian offensive into its territory, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has imposed martial law throughout the country, announcing a general mobilisation.
During recent peace talks, Russia has required that Ukraine declare itself officially a neutral country, providing guarantees that it will never join NATO.
