40,000 residents of the unrecognized LPR and DPR arrived in Russia, and dozens of Russian regions announced their readiness to accept refugees. The main thing about the evacuation – in the material of RBC
Photo: Sergey Baturin / RIA Novosti
Main by 16.00
-
The state of emergency was introduced in the Voronezh region due to the growing number of refugees from the Donbass.
-
About 950,000 residents of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR have applied for a Russian passport, said State Duma deputy from the Rostov region Viktor Vodolatsky. In total, 775,620 residents of Donbass have acquired Russian citizenship by February 15, the deputy continued, and another 170,000 are being processed.
- The Rostov region received about 40,000 refugees from Donbass, Alexander Chupriyan, acting head of the Russian Emergencies Ministry, said. 92 temporary accommodation centers have been deployed in the region. About 2 thousand people were taken by train to the Voronezh and Kursk regions.
- According to Chupriyan, the authorities of the unrecognized DPR and LPR will provide the ministry with evacuation schedules on a daily basis.
- On the second day of the mass evacuation from the territory of Donbass, many kilometers of traffic jams formed at the border, refugees complained of confusion and many hours of waiting.
- At the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the DPR declared, that as of the morning of February 19, 6.6 thousand people were taken out of the self-proclaimed republic, of which 2.4 thousand were children. The territory of the LPR since February 18 left almost 29 thousand inhabitants.
- Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrugs, Tyumen regionAmur Region, Altai Territory, Novgorod and Jewish Autonomous Regions.
- The head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, said that the European Union does not believe the warnings of the DPR and LPR authorities about the preparation of an offensive by Ukraine. The authorities of the unrecognized republics explained the beginning of the evacuation by this.
How did the evacuation begin?
- On February 18, against the background of the aggravation of the situation in the conflict zone in the Donbass, the authorities of the LPR and DPR announced the evacuation of the civilian population to Russia.
- The head of the DPR, Denis Pushilin, was the first to announce the evacuation. He said that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky would soon give the military an order to launch an offensive in the Donbass and an invasion of the territory of the DPR and the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR). According to Pushilin, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) “are in combat formations and are ready for the forcible capture of Donbass.”
video
- Following him, the head of the LPR, Leonid Pasechnik, announced the evacuation. He also warned about the preparation of the Ukrainian offensive. Pasechnik also appealed “to all men capable of holding weapons in their hands”, with a request to “stand up for the defense of their land.”
- Official Kiev, however, refutes the preparation of the offensive. Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) Valery Zaluzhny said that the “occupation authorities” of the self-proclaimed republics of Donbass are using the population to escalate and that the information about the offensive is a lie. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba on his Twitter declaredthat Kiev does not plan any attack on the republics of Donbass. According to him, Ukraine is counting on a diplomatic settlement of the conflict. He called statements from Donetsk and Luhansk part of “Russian propaganda”.
- The population of the DPR is about 2.2 million people, the LPR – 1.4 million.
New aggravation of the situation around Ukraine. The main thing
