Ukraine expands Sumy evacuations

KYIV (AFP) — Ukraine ordered the evacuation of 11 more villages in its Sumy region bordering Russia on Saturday amid fears Moscow was gearing up for a fresh ground assault.

Russia claims to have captured several settlements in the northeastern region in recent weeks, and has massed more than 50,000 soldiers on the other side of the border, according to Kyiv.

The evacuations came just two days before a possible meeting between the two sides in Istanbul, as Washington called on both countries to end the three-year war.

Authorities in Ukraine’s Sumy region said Saturday they were evacuating 11 villages within a roughly 30-kilometer range from 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 spokesperson for Ukraine’s border service, Andriy Demchenko, said Thursday that Russia was poised to “attempt an attack” on Sumy.

In total, 213 settlements in the region have been ordered to evacuate.

Russia’s defense ministry said Saturday that its forces had taken another Sumy region village, Vodolagy.

Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022, has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the destruction of towns and cities across parts of the east and south of the country.

The Kremlin now controls around a fifth of its neighbor and claims to have annexed five Ukrainian regions as its own, including Crimea, which it seized in 2014.

Within the past 24 hours, Russian attacks across Ukraine killed at least eight people, including a nine-year-old girl, authorities said Saturday.

Russia has confirmed it will send a delegation to the Turkish city, but Kyiv has yet to accept the proposal, warning the talks would not yield results unless the Kremlin provided its peace terms in advance.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday it was still not clear what Moscow was planning to achieve at the meeting and that so far, it did not “look very serious.”

Russia says it will provide its peace memorandum in person in Istanbul.

Ukraine suspects it will contain unrealistic demands that Kyiv has already rejected, including that Ukraine cede territory still under its control and abandon its North Atlantic Treaty Organization ambitions.