Ten thousand people evacuated from Kharkiv due to Russian military strikes
Nearly ten thousand people have been evacuated from the region of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, after a series of attacks by Russian forces over the past week, the region's governor said.
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"A total of 9,907 people have been evacuated," said Governor Oleg Synegubov, quoted by AFP, more than a week after the start of the Russian offensive.
The Ukrainian President has already warned that the Russian attack on Kharkiv, in the northeast of the country, could be part of a wider offensive.
Volodymyr Zelensky has already acknowledged that the situation in Kharkiv is very complicated, but stressed that Kyiv cannot lose the city to Russia.
Zelensky visited the region on Thursday, after having cancelled commitments abroad, including visits to Spain and Portugal.
On Friday, Russia claimed advances in the Kharkiv region, where it is conducting an offensive to create a buffer zone to prevent attacks from Kyiv on Russian territory.
According to estimates from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), based in Washington, Russian forces will have advanced eight kilometres into Ukrainian territory after a week of offensive in the Kharkiv region.
The aim of creating a security zone along the border of Russia with Ukraine was confirmed on Friday by Russian President Vladimir Putin, during a visit to China.
Putin described the offensive in northeastern Ukraine as a response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory.
"I had said publicly that if this continued [the Ukrainian attacks], we would be forced to create a security zone, a sanitary zone. That's what we're doing," he said, quoted by the French agency AFP.
Putin also said that, for now, Russia had no plans to take Kharkiv.
Kharkiv had more than 1.4 million inhabitants before the war triggered by the Russian invasion of February 2022, which has already caused an undetermined number of deaths in both countries.
Read Also: Intensification of fighting in Kharkiv worsens humanitarian impact, says UN (Portuguese version)
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