Donetsk - People living in Donetsk are leaving the city in the fear of large-scale fighting between government and militia forces.
The city administration has not declared mass evacuation but many people have decided to flee nevertheless.
“Now that the militia forces have left Sloviansk, we fear that the Ukrainian security forces will get into Donetsk as well and that hostilities will start, and so, worrying about the security of our families, we’ve decided to leave the city and make our way toward the Russian border, to places where there is provisional accommodation for refugees,” local resident Aliona Bondarenko told Interfax.
A man who also lives in Donetsk, Andriy Melkonian, told Interfax that he would most likely try to evacuate his family from the city within hours.
“The situation is unquiet. I fear they’ll be dropping bombs. For my family there’ll be nothing good about that in any case. So we’ll go over to stay with our relatives. I can’t exclude the possibility that we’ll come back after it’s all over. We’ve already had to flee Nagorno-Karabakh once,” Melkonian said.
The mayor’s office said in a statement on Saturday, July 5 that a report that militia forces had arrived in Donetsk from Sloviansk and Kramatorsk had been confirmed. The office said there were currently sporadic outbursts of gunfire in the vicinity of Donetsk airport and urged local people “not to move through the city without dire need.”
