Parents defy evacuation orders, bring children back to Toretsk amid frontline threats
Despite the forced evacuation of children from Toretsk in
Ukraine’s frontline Donetsk Oblast, some parents are hiding their families or
bringing them back after evacuation checks, the city’s military administration
head Vasyl Chynchyk said in an interview with Radio Liberty on July 4.
Since the forced evacuation began on Oct. 23, 2023, 235
children from 188 families remaining in the in the community have been taken to
safer places. The last three children were evacuated on June 29.
“Every day, our head of the children’s evacuation service,
the National Police and the State Emergency Service have been trying to
convince families to evacuate,” he said.
“Iryna Vereshchuk (Ukraine’s Reintegration Minister) even
gave guarantees about the possible rehabilitation of these children abroad. We
were all ready to help this family adapt to safer areas so that they would
experience the minimum inconvenience associated with the move. And we
succeeded! They decided to leave on their own.”
However, there were cases when parents did not even let their
children out of their apartments to avoid being noticed.
“Unfortunately, it happened that when parents officially
left through the checkpoints, we made the appropriate notes, but then they
secretly bypassed the checkpoints and secretly brought their children back,”
Chynchyk said, noting that there were “isolated cases” when some families were
forcibly evacuated “for the second, third, and even sixth time.”
“Parents do not realize the responsibility and the threat of
Russian missiles, airstrikes and shelling.”
Another 80 children were evacuated between June 24 and July
2, with priority given to children and people with limited mobility.
However, some children may still be in the community,
although they were reported to have officially left.
This follows an earlier report by Ukraine’s General Staff on
July 3 about significant intensification of Russian forces in the
Toretsk sector.
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