Russian-Installed Authorities in Ukraine’s Donbas Proclaim Evacuation of Civilian Residents
Kyiv, West condemn the move as a provocation aiming to justify a Russian invasion of Ukraine
The leaders of two Russian-controlled areas in eastern Ukraine urged civilians to evacuate immediately to Russia on Friday as officials in Washington warned that Moscow was preparing for an invasion and looking for an excuse to start hostilities.
Artillery, tank and mortar exchanges increased along the cease-fire line separating the Ukrainian-controlled part of the Donbas region from Russian-held areas, according to accounts from both sides. Kyiv said it had ordered its troops to exercise restraint to avoid giving Russia a pretext to invade and denounced the evacuation announcement as a provocation.
Russian state media showed footage of busloads of civilians fleeing the Russian-controlled areas of Donetsk and Luhansk, the two regions that make up Donbas. The nearby Rostov region of Russia said it had prepared temporary accommodation for 700,000 people, according to Russia’s RIA news agency.
On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered that all the residents of Donbas evacuating to Russia be paid 10,000 rubles, or roughly $130, according to state media. “Unfortunately, we are currently seeing an escalation of the situation in Donbas.” He said tensions would ease if Kyiv would negotiate “on political, military, economic and humanitarian measures to end the conflict.”
Ukrainian and Western officials warned that the events in the Donbas—where roughly 14,000 people have died in fighting since Russia fomented a separatist uprising there in 2014, sending weapons and troops across the border—were part of a Russian attempt to justify armed intervention.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking at a conference in Munich, said events in Donbas were “part of a scenario that is already in play of creating false provocations, of then having to respond to those provocations and then ultimately committing new aggression against Ukraine.”
Russian-installed leaders of Donetsk and Luhansk warned that Kyiv was planning to launch an imminent offensive to retake these areas, seized by Russian-backed forces in 2014. The commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, Lt. Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, said that Russia is engaging in a disinformation campaign.
“An offensive in the Donbas will inevitably cause mass casualties among civilians, which is why this is not an option under consideration,” he said Friday.
For months, Russia has been massing troops around Ukraine and at least 150,000 are now deployed, according to U.S. estimates. Moscow denies that it intends to attack Ukraine.
Denis Pushilin, head of the Russian-controlled Donetsk People’s Republic, gave a televised address Friday urging residents to leave for Russia. “A temporary departure will protect life and health for you and your loved ones,” he said.
Video footage on Russian news channels featured air-raid sirens going off in Donetsk Friday afternoon. At night, a car used by a local security official exploded in central Donetsk, according to footage on Russian TV. Nobody was injured.
The head of the nearby Luhansk People’s Republic issued similar instructions and ordered able-bodied men to take up arms against what he also described as an imminent Ukrainian assault.
Ukrainian and Western officials have long warned of Russian-installed authorities creating a so-called false-flag incident they could pin on Kyiv.
While skirmishes along the front lines in Donbas have occurred repeatedly since major combat ended in 2015, an upsurge in shelling that started on Thursday is “anomalous,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said.
From the beginning of the year and until Feb. 16, Russian-backed forces fired 107 times on Ukrainian military positions along the cease-fire line, he said, and only 22 of these incidents involved heavy artillery, tanks, antitank missiles and other weapons prohibited under the cease-fire agreements.
On Thursday, there were 60 shelling incidents, out of which 43 used prohibited weapons, with 30 Ukrainian-held towns and villages across the front line getting hit, Mr. Reznikov said. There were 53 more incidents by 5 p.m. on Friday, according to the Ukrainian military.
“Our task is not to do what the Russian Federation is pushing us to do,” Mr. Reznikov told a Parliament hearing Friday. “Our task is to respond, but to keep a cool head.”
In 2008, Russian troops invaded the republic of Georgia, after saying that Georgian troops had shelled the capital of a South Ossetia, a Moscow-controlled breakaway statelet.
“They may be trying to force our hand in negotiations, or attempting to provoke response fire and use that as a pretext to start a full-scale invasion,” said Serhii Haidai, the Ukrainian governor of Luhansk. “The South Ossetian option is very probable.”
The governor said Ukrainian forces had been told to “shoot back only when there is a direct threat to life, when they are being hit in the direct proximity to their own position.”
In ordering the evacuation of Russian-controlled Donetsk, Mr. Pushilin, a Russian citizen and a member of the ruling United Russia party, said his administration had observed a steady increase in Ukrainian military forces in the area.
“Today their guns are aimed at civilians, at us and our children,” Mr. Pushilin said. “The enemy’s armed forces are in combat formations and are ready for the forceful capture of Donbas.”
The Russian-installed Donetsk authorities earlier Friday said they had intercepted a Ukrainian infiltration team allegedly attempting to attack a chemical plant in the city of Horlivka. Kyiv denied that such an incident occurred.
Viktoriya Semibratskaya, a writer who lives with her husband in Donetsk, said the situation there was calm and she didn’t intend to leave.
“We are not leaving because we are not criminals,” she said. “We are living on our own land. We are absolutely peaceful people. We work here. I was born here and so were my son and husband. I absolutely don’t see any reason to run away.”
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