The evacuation of the besieged city of Sumi, in northeastern Ukraine, has been successfully completed and a total of 5,000 people “are already safe”, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the office of Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky. Tymoshenko has reported at dawn through his Telegram channel, where you can also see night images of people allegedly leaving the city in cars, trains and buses, that the evacuation of the city had been a success and that in addition to the 5,000 people Some 1,000 private cars had been able to leave.
Sumi’s evacuation began early Tuesday morning with a first column of about 20 full buses of citizens, especially foreign students from India. A second column of more than 35 buses left the city in the afternoon – of almost 270,000 inhabitants – with more than 600 people inside.
More than two million people have fled Already from Ukraine since the Russian invasion began thirteen days ago, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). After three consecutive days of failed evacuation attempts, Ukraine and Russia finally agreed on Tuesday to open a humanitarian corridor from Sumi to Poltava, in the east of the country, a route previously notified to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). ).
The Ukrainian authorities have confirmed that the Sumi humanitarian corridor will be extended this Wednesday between 9:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. (local time) and that citizens will be able to leave the city to Poltava both by their own transport and by buses. “The negotiation group worked all night and the operation of the humanitarian corridor from Sumi to Poltava was extended today from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and we will provide for pregnant women, women with children, elderly people and people with disabilities“, assured the head of the Sumi Regional Administration, Dimitro Zhivitski, in his official Telegram profile.
Despite this good news, in Ojtirka, in the Sumi region, one person has died and at least 14 have been injured during a Russian shelling of residential areas, the Ukrainian news agency Unian reported.
In other parts of the country, anti-aircraft sirens have sounded again in Kiev, Yitomir, Vasilkov or Vinitsia, according to the newspaper ‘The Kiev Independent’, who has also reported that foreign volunteers will be able to obtain Ukrainian citizenship if they wishas the First Deputy Minister of the Interior, Yevhen Yenin, has said.
As a result of the bombing, at least 150 people were evacuated from a house in Kharkov and about 200 from another, the region’s Police Communications Department said, according to the Ukrinform news agency. In this regard, he pointed out that Russia continues to bomb critical infrastructuresuch as electrical substations and civilian housing in Kharkov.
Source: Lasexta
Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
