Ukrainian officials said yesterday said they had evacuated all children from several towns and villages near the front line in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, a focal point of Kyiv's counteroffensive.
Kyiv launched its push to recapture territory in June but Russian forces have put up fierce resistance and Ukraine has ordered evacuations from several regions as their forces wrest back land.
"We have fulfilled the task set by the Ukrainian government... and evacuated all children and their families" from five settlements in Zaporizhzhia, the deputy head of the region Yevgen Myronenko said.
Local media cited regional officials as saying a total of 59 children had been removed from the towns.
The evacuations from the five settlements -- Gulyaipole, Stepnogirsk, Preobrazhenka, Yegorivka, and Novopavlivka -- were announced in August due to what officials described as a "difficult" security situation.
Ukrainian forces over recent weeks have reported limited gains in the Zaporizhzhia region where they are coming up against entrenched Russian positions.
General Oleksandr Tarnavskiy, who is leading the counteroffensive in the south, said last weekend that Ukraine's army had broken through Russian lines in Zaporizhzhia.
Kyiv last month declared a strategic victory when it recaptured the southern village of Robotyne.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin said yesterday that underwater explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea were organised by the United States and Britain.
"They are involved, one way or another, in this terrorist attack," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a regular news briefing in response to a question about the September 2022 blasts, without providing any evidence.
Poland's agriculture minister said yesterday talks with Ukraine were on track as the two countries try to resolve a dispute about a ban imposed by Warsaw on Polish grain imports.
Warsaw and Kyiv are allies, but relations have soured since Poland, Hungary and Slovakia decided to extend a ban that was introduced to protect farmers from a surge in grain and food imports from Ukraine after Russia's invasion last year.
The Polish government is also under pressure from the far right to take a tougher stance on Ukraine before an election on October 15.
"I am glad that we are talking about the future, that we are building mechanisms for the future and we are calming certain emotions that have not served us well, and this is probably a good direction," the Polish minister, Robert Telus, told a press conference after online talks with Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Mykola Solsky.
Source: AFP, Kyiv
