The noose is tightening on the Donbass, now the Kremlin’s priority target. kyiv on Wednesday (April 6th) called on residents of eastern Ukraine to evacuate the region amid fears of a major and deadly offensive by the Russian army. Regional authorities “call on the population to leave these territories and do everything to ensure that the evacuations take place in an organized manner”, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said. She added that it had to be done “now” under penalty of “risk death” in the next few days.
If the Russian army launched a major attack in the region, “we couldn’t help anymore” the inhabitants, she warned, “because it would be virtually impossible to stop the fighting”.
The Kremlin wants to “take control of the whole of Donbass”
Iryna Vereshchuk also judged that the withdrawal of Russian forces around kyiv and Chernihiv (north) last week was not “not a gesture of goodwill” of Moscow in the framework of the Russian-Ukrainian negotiations, but the consequence of “the will of our army, the authorities and all the Ukrainian people” to repel the Russians.
Russia has said in recent days that it wants to reposition its forces to focus its offensive on the “release” from Donbass in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian backed separatists have clashed with the Ukrainian army for eight years. On Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the Russian army was strengthening to “take control of the whole Donbass” and realize “a land bridge with Crimea”annexed by Russia in 2014.