The Ukrainian authorities said on Wednesday (September 27th) that they had evacuated all children from several towns and villages near the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region, the focal point of the counter-offensive against the Russian army. "We have fulfilled the task established by the Ukrainian government" and "evacuated all children with their families" from the localities of Gulyaipole, Preobrazhenka, Yegorivka, Stepnogirsk and Novopavlivka, Deputy Governor Yevgeny Myronenko said on television. According to Ukrainian media, a total of 59 children were evacuated.
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Counter-offensive
The evacuations of these localities were announced in August, the authorities referring to a "difficult" security situation. Ukrainian forces have reported limited gains in recent weeks in the Zaporizhzhia region where they are facing fortified positions of the Russian army. However, Ukrainian troops managed to retake the town of Robotyné, located very close to the towns and villages affected by the evacuations, in early September. The fighting is now taking place east of this village, near Verbové.
The Ukrainian army has breached the first Russian lines of defense on the southern front, assured the Ukrainian general in charge of the counter-offensive Oleksandr Tarnavsky, in an interview with the American channel CNN broadcast Saturday. On the strength of Western arms deliveries, Kiev launched a vast counter-offensive in the South and East at the beginning of June with the aim of retaking all the territories occupied by Russia. If this operation has long stumbled on the lines fortified by Moscow and has so far only allowed to retake a few hundred square kilometers and a handful of devastated villages, it seems to accelerate in recent weeks.
