Ukrainian authorities have announced the mandatory evacuation of Donetsk residents, and while fighting continues on several fronts, Russia has called on international experts to investigate the deaths of prisoners of war in the bombing of a separatist-run prison in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that his government had ordered the mandatory evacuation of residents in the eastern Donetsk region, which is witnessing fierce fighting with Russia.
In a late-night television address, Zelensky added that hundreds of thousands of people still in the fighting areas of the greater Donbass region, which includes Donetsk as well as the neighboring Lugansk region, need to leave.
Ukrainian media quoted Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vershichuk as saying that the evacuations should take place before the start of the winter months, as the natural gas supply infrastructure in the region has been destroyed.
Fierce battles
On the ground, the Russian Defense Ministry said that its forces destroyed a military train carrying a battalion of Ukrainian elite forces in Donetsk Province (east).
The ministry confirmed in a statement that it bombed the Ukrainian train with high-precision missiles, killing more than 140 people.
It added that its forces shot down a Ukrainian MiG-29 aircraft and destroyed two US-made M777 Howitzer artillery.
It confirmed that the Russian forces killed about 60 Ukrainian soldiers in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, and also targeted two American radars in Donetsk and Kherson.
For its part, the Ukrainian General Staff indicated that Russian artillery and air strikes targeted 14 military and civilian sites in the Kharkiv region.
The Ukrainian army also announced the killing of more than 100 Russian soldiers in battles in the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions (south).
The Ukrainian army described the battles with the Russian forces as violent, saying that confrontations are still continuing on the Sneherivka and Pashtanka fronts in Mykolaiv.
In a statement, the army reported the destruction of 4 military bases and 12 Russian ammunition depots in various locations in the southern areas of operations.
The Ukrainian Army's Southern Command said rail traffic to Kherson via the Dnipro River has been halted, which could further isolate Russian forces west of the river from supplies in occupied Crimea and in the east.
Russian soldiers in Mariupol (European News Agency)
Russian invitation
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that Moscow had invited experts from the United Nations and the Red Cross to investigate the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war held in a prison run by Moscow-backed separatists.
The ministry added in a statement that it was working "to conduct an impartial investigation" into what it called the attack on the prison.
The separatists said the death toll was 53, and accused Kyiv of bombing the prison with missiles, but the Ukrainian armed forces denied responsibility, and said that Russian artillery targeted the prison to cover up the mistreatment of detainees there.
Earlier, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that the full political, criminal and moral responsibility for the "bloody massacre of Ukrainian prisoners" bore personally Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, his "criminal" regime, and Washington.
Moscow had accused Kyiv of this bombing, and the Russian Investigative Committee said that Ukrainian forces "bombed the prison where members of the Azov Brigade are being detained, using American HIMARS missiles," which Kyiv denied.