Ukraine has finally announced that it has begun a retreat procedure as they withdraw their forces from Severodonetsk as Russian forces pursue and take over the region.
The withdrawal operation has been expected to last a few days as the head of the Severodonetsk district military administration, Roman Vlasenko.
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“As of now, the Ukrainian military still remains in Severodonetsk,” Vlasenko said on Friday. “They are being withdrawn from the city at the moment. It started yesterday.
“There are a lot of units there, so I think the withdrawal will take a few days,” he added, without specifying where they were withdrawing to.
Vlasenko went on to say that 568 civilians were also in the city, inside the Azot plant.
“They will be able to get out as soon as the shelling is over, but to the occupied territory,” he added.
The mayor of Mykolaiv, a city in southern Ukraine, Oleksandr Sienkevych, has advised the people there to flee for their life.
According to Sienkevych, the city is being heavily shelled, and anyone who wants to survive should evacuate right once.
‘I suggest everyone who wants to stay alive to leave the city. About 230,000 people remain in Mykolaiv City now,’ the mayor said on Friday, via a CNN program which was monitored by Africa Today News, New York.
Evacuation routes out of Mykolaiv lead to Odessa, Kryvyi Rih and the capital city of Kyiv.
The mayor asserted that the situation in the city is ‘generally very bad,’ adding that the city is shelled every day.’
According to him, no fewer than 111 people have already been killed and 502 people have been injured, including six children.