In a televised overnight address, Zelenskiy also said the hundreds of thousands of people still in combat zones in the greater Donbas region, which includes both Donetsk and the neighboring Luhansk region, must leave.
“The more people who leave (the) Donetsk region now, the fewer people the Russian army will have time to kill,” he said, adding that residents who left would receive compensation.
Separately, domestic Ukrainian media quoted Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk as saying the evacuation should take place before winter sets in as the region’s natural gas deposits had been destroyed.
Zelenskiy said hundreds of thousands of people still lived in areas of Donbas where there was fierce fighting.
“Many are refusing to leave, but it has yet to happen,” the president said. “If you have the chance, talk to those who are still in the combat zones in Donbas. Please convince them that it is necessary to leave.”
It is not the first time Ukrainian authorities have called on citizens to evacuate the areas they control in Donetsk, and John Herbst, a former US ambassador to Ukraine, told Reuters that this could be due to the expectation of heavier fighting in Ukraine. instead of fuel shortages.
“I don’t know why Zelenskiy made the call,” he said. “What I do know is that there was heavy fighting in Donetsk. The Russians took (neighboring) Luhansk (oblast) a few weeks ago. I expect more fierce fighting in Donetsk.”
Herbst said he did not expect Russia to capture the rest of Donetsk, given the longer logistics lines they would need and the Ukrainian armed forces’ use of advanced long-range artillery and missile systems supplied by the United States and others.
Earlier on Saturday, the Ukrainian army said more than 100 Russian soldiers had been killed and seven tanks destroyed in fighting in the south on Friday, including the Kherson region that is the focus of Kiev’s counter-offensive in that part of the country and a important link in the supply lines.
Rail traffic to Kherson across the Dnipro River had been cut off, the army’s southern command said, potentially further isolating Russian forces west of the river from supplies in occupied Crimea and the east.
South of the town of Bakhmut, which Russia has named as a prime target in Donetsk, the Ukrainian military said Russian forces had been “partially successful” in gaining control of the Semyhirya settlement by storming it from three directions.
“He settled on the outskirts of the settlement,” the army’s evening report said, referring to Russian troops.
Defense and intelligence officials from Britain, which has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies since Moscow invaded its neighbor on February 24, portrayed Russian forces as struggling to maintain momentum.
Ukraine has in recent weeks used Western-supplied long-range missile systems to heavily damage three bridges over the Dnipro, cutting off the city of Kherson and — in the opinion of British defense officials — leaving the 49th Russian Army highly vulnerable on the river’s western bank. .
The pro-Ukrainian governor of the Kherson region, Dmytro Butriy, said fighting continues in many parts of the region, with Berislav district, just northwest of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station, being particularly hard hit.
“In some villages, not a single house has been left intact, all infrastructure has been destroyed, people live in cellars,” he wrote on Telegram.
Just north of Lysychansk, which Moscow forces captured after weeks of fighting in early July, Ukrainian partisans destroyed a railway junction box near the Russian-controlled city of Svatove on Friday night, making it more difficult for Moscow to transport ammunition to the front lines with the train, Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Gaidai said in an online post.
Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield reports.
Officials from the Russian-appointed government that governs the Kherson region rejected Western and Ukrainian assessments of the situation earlier this week.
On Friday, the British government described the Russian government as “growing desperate” after it lost tens of thousands of soldiers in the war. Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence chief Richard Moore added on Twitter that Russia is “out of steam”.
PRISON DEATH
Ukraine and Russia have exchanged allegations of a rocket attack or explosion early Friday that appeared to have killed dozens of Ukrainian POWs in the frontline city of Olenivka, which is being held by Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Donetsk.
Russia’s defense ministry on Saturday released a list of 50 Ukrainian POWs killed and 73 injured in a Ukrainian military strike involving a US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS).
Ministry spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov said that “all political, criminal and moral responsibility” rested with Zelenskiy, “his criminal regime and Washington who supports them”.
The ministry said Russia had invited experts from the United Nations and the Red Cross to investigate the dead “in the interest of an objective investigation”.
The separatists estimate the death toll at 53.
The Ukrainian armed forces denied responsibility, saying Russian artillery had attacked the prison to cover up the beatings there. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Friday that Russia had committed a war crime and called for international condemnation.
Reuters could not immediately verify the different versions of the events, but some deaths were confirmed by Reuters journalists who visited the prison.
The United Nations previously said it would be willing to send experts to investigate whether they could get permission from both sides. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it sought entry and offered to help evacuate the wounded.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed his condolences in a Friday phone call with Kuleba, saying Washington was determined “to hold Russia accountable for atrocities,” the US State Department said.
Ukraine has accused Russia of atrocities against civilians and has identified more than 10,000 possible war crimes. Russia denies targeting civilians and war crimes.