Ukrainian authorities announced Friday the evacuation of thousands of civilians from dozens of villages in the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, citing advancing Russian forces. The move underscores the deteriorating security situation in the area as fighting intensifies.
Ukraine’s Minister of Reintegration, Oleksiy Kuleba, stated via Telegram that, “Due to the difficult security situation, it has been decided to forcibly evacuate more than 3,000 children and their families from 44 settlements located on the front lines in the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions.” He also noted that evacuations had been carried out in the Chernihiv region in northern Ukraine in late December.
According to Kuleba, since June 1, 2025, a total of 150,000 people, including approximately 18,000 children, have been evacuated from front-line areas to safer locations. This large-scale evacuation reflects the growing pressure from Russian troops along the eastern and southern fronts.
The forced evacuations in recent years have been largely concentrated in the eastern Donetsk region, the epicenter of much of the fighting. However, Russian forces are also making advances in the Dnipropetrovsk region, which they entered in the summer of 2025, and in the Zaporizhzhia region, where the front lines had remained relatively static for years.
In a separate incident, Ukrainian officials reported that 19 people were injured in a Russian strike targeting residential buildings in the city of Kharkiv on Friday. Russia has denied targeting civilian areas. The governor of the Kharkiv region stated that the injured included a six-month-old infant.
Images from the scene showed damaged multi-story buildings and piles of charred debris, with firefighters battling the blaze. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the attack as “despicable,” stating that initial reports indicated that two missiles struck an ordinary residential area. Zelenskyy added, “Unfortunately, this is how the Russians treat life and people. They continue to…”
