Governor of Ukraine's Donetsk province urges evacuation of 350,000 residents

As Russian forces escalate their offensive after fully conquering an eastern Ukraine province yesterday, the governor of a neighboring region urges more than a quarter-million residents to evacuate.

Pavlo Kyrylenko says that getting the 350,000 people remaining in Donetsk province out is necessary to save lives and to enable the Ukrainian army to better defend towns from the Russian advance.

“The destiny of the whole country will be decided by the Donetsk region,” he tells reporters in Kramatorsk, the province’s administrative center and home to the Ukrainian military’s regional headquarters.

“Once there are fewer people, we will be able to concentrate more on our enemy and perform our main tasks,” Kyrylenko says.