Iryna Vereshchuk who is the Ukrainian Deputy prime minister has openly called on all residents to evacuate the southern Kherson region as conflicts intensified in the region.
“I urge you to evacuate as soon as possible, by all means. Don’t wait,” Vereshchuk said, according to CNN.
She warned that residents staying in the occupied districts is dangerous, adding that Russian forces could use them as human shields.
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“People must look for an opportunity to leave because our Armed Forces will de-occupy. There will be huge battles,” she warned.
On Thursday, Oleksandr Starukh, head of the Zaporizhzhia region military administration, said last month almost 40,000 evacuees arrived in Zaporizhzhia.
Russia on Wednesday had also revealed that it was investigating the torture of Russian soldiers held prisoner in Ukraine and recently released as part of a prisoner swap with Kyiv which happened in late June.
The Russian Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said in a statement that it was ‘verifying facts of inhuman treatment of Russia soldier prisoners in Ukraine’.
Africa Today News, New York recalls that just a few weeks ago Moscow and Kyiv exchanged 144 prisoners of war each — the biggest exchange since the start of Moscow’s Ukraine campaign launched on February 24.
The Russian committee said Moscow’s soldiers told investigators about ‘the violence they had suffered’.
According to its statement, one of the soldiers said Ukrainian medics treated him without anaesthetic and that he was ‘beaten, tortured with electricity’ in captivity.
The soldier allegedly said he was left without food and water for days.
Another injured Russian soldier, who had his left amputated, said he was badly beaten and had his wound irritated by Ukrainian medics, the statement said.
The testimonies of the freed Russian soldiers are examples of ‘violations of the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war’, the Russian committee said.