Kyiv on Wednesday announced the mandatory evacuation of children from several villages in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, pointing to a dangerous uptick in fighting and recent Russian gains.
The industrial region is one of four that Russia claims to have annexed since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The region's main city -- also called Zaporizhzhia -- had a pre-war population of around 840,000 people and now lies some 30 kilometres (18 miles) from the front lines with Russian troops, according to Ukrainian military bloggers.
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"We made a difficult but necessary decision -- to mandate the evacuation of children together with their parents or legal guardians from five settlements in the Zaporizhzhia region," Oleksiy Kuleba, a deputy prime minister of Ukraine announced on social media.
In a departure from previous evacuation announcements, he did not name the villages, but said that around 40 children impacted would be relocated to the central Cherkasy region.
"Mandatory evacuation is always a hard step. But under constant shelling, it is the only responsible way to save lives -- first and foremost, the lives of children," Kuleba added in his statement.
Ukrainian authorities routinely urge residents of frontline areas to flee, but mandatory evacuation notices are enforced and indicate that the safety of an impacted area has sharply deteriorated.
The front line in Zaporizhzhia was relatively stable for months compared to other sections further east, but Russian forces appear to have since stepped up their assaults, pushing towards Zaporizhzhia city.
The Russian defence ministry earlier on Wednesday claimed they had captured the border village of Komarivka in the northeastern Sumy region, where Moscow's troops are also advancing towards the local capital.
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