514,000 people live in Donetsk region, more than 60,000 of them need to be evacuated first

Ihor Boyko, deputy head of the Donetsk Regional Military Administration, said this at a briefing, a Ukrinform correspondent reported.

"Today, about 514,000 people live in the region. I will not say that everyone needs to leave. But first of all, the elderly, pensioners, families with children, people with limited mobility should evacuate... And from the territory of those settlements that are as close as possible to the line of hostilities, to the front," Boyko said.

He stated that it is necessary to evacuate from the territories in the north of the region - Lyman and Svyatohirsk communities, Bakhmut district, Chasiv Yar, Toretsk; then Pokrovsk district, Avdiivka and Marinka directions, Ocheretyne, Novohrodivka and Kurakhivka communities, the city of Myrnohrad.

"We urge people to evacuate from these settlements in the first place. More than 60,000 people live on the territory of these communities," said the deputy head of the region.

As reported, in the Donetsk region, Russian invaders have intensified shelling of settlements since December 2023, so it was decided to extend the mandatory evacuation of the population.

Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of safe regions, more than 1 million 350 thousand people have been evacuated from the Donetsk region, including more than 164 thousand children.