In view of the massive attacks by the Russian army, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has asked residents of the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk to leave the area.

"In the Donbass there are hundreds of thousands of people, tens of thousands of children, many refuse to leave," said Zelenskyy in a video address on Saturday evening.

The President urged Donbass residents to leave the region.

"Believe me," he said, "the more people leave Donetsk region, the fewer people the Russian army can kill."

Nicholas Zimmerman

Editor in Politics.

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Zelenskyi warned that if they did not, the residents of the region risked becoming victims of Russian “terror”.

“At this stage of the war, terror is Russia's main weapon.

And therefore the main task of every Ukrainian and every defender of freedom and humanity is to do everything possible to isolate the terrorist state and protect as many people as possible from Russian attacks," said Zelenskyy.

"We are not Russia - precisely because for us every life is important," the Ukrainian president added to his message.

The Ukrainian government ordered mandatory resettlement on Saturday.

She justified this step by saying that the citizens had to get to safety in good time before the start of the heating season because the gas pipelines in the Donetsk region had been destroyed by the war.

Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk, who heads the evacuation team, said on television that people who wanted to stay had to sign a statement stating that they were aware of the danger to their lives.

She warned that there would be no heating in the winter.

Red Cross is not allowed to visit injured people in prison camps

With the request to leave the Donetsk region, the government seems not only to want to protect civilians from hostilities.

It also apparently wants to prevent a scenario like that in the Cherson and Luhansk regions, where the occupiers are conducting an aggressive Russification campaign.

In his video speech, Zelenskyi emphatically condemned the killing of Ukrainian prisoners of war in a penal camp in Olenivka in the Russian-controlled part of Donetsk Oblast.

According to Russian and Ukrainian reports, at least 50 Ukrainian prisoners died there in a rocket attack.

Russia accuses the Ukrainian armed forces of the attack, while Ukraine in turn accuses Russia of deliberately killing the soldiers.

The International Committee of the Red Cross continued on Sunday to wait for permission promised by Moscow to access the at least 70 injured prisoners.

According to satellite images from the American company Maxar Technologies, part of the prison camp was deliberately destroyed, while other parts remained largely intact.

The American Institute for the Study of War stated in a report that it was unable to determine who was responsible for the deadly attack.

But it is "more likely that Russian forces are responsible".

A representative of the Ministry of Defense in Washington made a similar statement, saying that in the past various Russian statements were not true.

A video of a Ukrainian prisoner of war being castrated also supports the thesis that the Russian war is becoming increasingly brutal.

The recording, the origin of which remains unclear, was shared on pro-Russian Telegram channels at the end of last week.

The Ukrainian Navy on Sunday denied allegations that Kyiv had flown a drone attack on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea on Sunday night.

The alleged attack was a "made-up excuse" by Russia to justify the cancellation of the Sevastopol parade on Russian Navy Day.

In Russia itself, corresponding celebrations took place on Sunday;

in St. Petersburg, President Vladimir Putin took part.