The remaining 10% of the townspeople are waiting for forced evacuation
The mayor of Avdiivka Vitaliy Barabash is going to carry out the forced evacuation of the people who remained in the city. According to the head of the Ukrainian administration, among the 2,500 residents who did not leave earlier voluntarily, there are those who are “waiting for Russia.” Therefore, in his opinion, people should be taken out of the city by force.
Photo: Frame from video
At the start of the special military operation, about 30,000 people lived in Avdiyivka. By mid-August, only 2,500 urban residents remained, including 80 children. The destruction of urban infrastructure and residential buildings, which was largely facilitated by the tactics of Ukrainian formations hiding in residential areas, forced most of the population to leave.
Opportunities and desire to leave the city were not all. Since most of the houses in Avdiivka are either damaged or occupied by Ukrainian troops, many of the remaining citizens live in basements and bomb shelters, where they are also forced to endure interruptions in electricity and water supply.
Earlier, all pensioners were ordered to leave the city. According to the residents of Avdiivka evacuated to Uman, the places where they were taken out of the city did not correspond to the declared ones, and they were asked to pay 75% of their pension for living.
Upon arrival, passports were taken away from people, lonely old people were sent to nursing homes, and the rest were settled in hostels, where there were not enough places for everyone and they had to be crowded. Because of such conditions, some Avdeevites asked to return. By the way, some of the evacuees voluntarily returned to Avdiivka later, preferring the front-line city to the Ukrainian rear.
The difficult living conditions of Avdiivka are exacerbated by the Ukrainian authorities themselves. Earlier, Barabash said that by September 1, due to the evacuation of doctors in the city, medical care would be stopped. But, apparently, for those who decided to wait for the arrival of Russian troops, this does not mean anything. It will be possible to “clear” the city from them only by force.
On the extent to which this practice has become the norm for Ukraine and why it is actually being carried out, MK spoke withmilitary historian Yuriy Knutov.
“We have already encountered this,” the expert recalled. “In Ukraine, the use of civilians as a “human shield” is widely used, which distinguishes the Kyiv regime from any other regimes. There have never been such precedents in history, and Kyiv does it all the time.”
Knutov recalled the story of the evacuation in Kramatorsk. “They began to evacuate people there, then demanded that they return, and after a while they announced the evacuation again and hit the station with Tochka-U. Because pro-Russian people live there and they tried to exterminate them. Therefore, Avdiivka and other front-line cities are now being evacuated. The leadership of Ukraine also spoke about this, which was going to evacuate up to 500,000 people. But this evacuation is akin to filtering.”
According to Knutov, in this way Kyiv is trying to withdraw those people who are pro-Russian, so that there are no sympathizers and there is no transfer of information to Russian troops and the People’s Militia of the DPR. “It is not known what else awaits the people who will be evacuated. We know that the nationalists shot at columns with refugees who were heading deep into Ukraine, and then they said that it was Russian troops who were shooting. Nothing new is happening in Avdiivka. All this is a continuation of the old story.”
