Ukraine orders evacuation of villages as Russia prepares fresh assault
Credit: Scopal
Ukraine has ordered the evacuation of 11 more villages in its Sumy region as fears grow that Moscow is gearing up for a new ground assault.
Russia claims to have captured several villages in the north-eastern region in recent weeks, and has amassed more than 50,000 soldiers on the other side of the border, according to Kyiv.
The evacuations come just two days before possible talks between the two sides in Istanbul, as Washington called on both to end the three-year war.
Russia has confirmed that it will send a delegation to the Turkish city but Ukraine has yet to accept the proposal, warning that the talks would not yield results unless the Kremlin provided its peace terms in advance.
On Friday, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, accused Moscow of doing 'everything' it could to sabotage the potential meeting by withholding its peace terms.
On Saturday, it was announced that Russian drone and missile attacks killed at least two people, including a 9-year-old girl.
The child was killed in a strike on the front line village of Dolynka, in the Zaporizhzhia region, and a 16-year-old was injured, Ivan Fedorov, Zaporizhzhia's governor, said.
A man was killed by Russian shelling in Ukraine's Kherson region, governor Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on Telegram.
Authorities in the Sumy region said on Saturday they were evacuating 11 villages within roughly 19 miles of the Russian border.
'The decision was made in view of the constant threat to civilian life as a result of shelling of border communities,' the regional administration said on social media.
A spokesman for Ukraine's border guard service, Andriy Demchenko, said Russia was poised to 'attempt an attack' on Sumy. In total, 213 settlements in the region have been ordered to evacuate.
Russia's defence ministry said on Saturday that its forces had taken another Sumy region village, Vodolagy.
Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022, has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the destruction of towns and villages across parts of the east and south of the country.
The Kremlin's army now controls around a fifth of the country and has a foothold in five regions including Crimea, which it seized in 2014.
On Monday, Jonathan Powell, Britain's national security adviser, is expected to attend the next round of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul. He will join counterparts from the US, France and Germany.
Moscow and Kyiv held their first direct negotiations in more than three years in Istanbul earlier this month, though they yielded little more than a large prisoner of war exchange.
On Friday, the Kremlin said it would only discuss the conditions of a ceasefire at the new talks after Kyiv demanded to see a peace memorandum prior to negotiations.
Ukraine said it wanted to see a document setting out Russia's peace proposal before committing to sending officials to Turkey. Russia said it would provide its peace memorandum in person on Monday.
But Ukraine suspects it will contain unrealistic demands that Kyiv has already rejected, including that Ukraine cedes territory still under its control and abandons its Nato ambitions.
In a statement to the United Nations on Friday, Vassily Nebenzia, Russia's UN ambassador, suggested the memorandum might call for Western countries to halt arm supplies to Kyiv and for Ukraine to abandon its military mobilisation.
Turkey has offered to host a summit between Putin, Zelensky and Trump, but the Kremlin has turned down the offer. Putin has consistently rebuffed calls for a 30-day, unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine.
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