Families with children may be forced to evacuate from border areas in Sumy region

Volodymyr Artiukh, the head of the Sumy Regional Military Administration, said this during the telethon.

According to him, some residents of the border area refuse to evacuate. This is especially true of the elderly.

"Yesterday I was in those settlements that are being evacuated today. I talked to those citizens who refuse (to evacuate - ed.). Unfortunately, such a situation exists," said Artiukh.

The head of the Sumy Regional Military Administration said that 80 families with children remain in the Velyka Pysarivka community. A decision to evacuate this community may be made soon.

"The situation is the same in Shostka district - Seredyna-Buda community. There, too, we have filed a petition for the forced evacuation of families with children," the official said.

On March 19, Russia launched a massive air strike on the civilian infrastructure of the Velyka Pysarivka territorial community, killing a school employee, the Prosecutor General's Office reports. A few days earlier, Artiukh said that the six-monthly rate of shelling in the Sumy region had been exceeded in two days.

• Earlier, the head of the Velyka Pysarivka community, Liudmyla Biriukova, told Espreso that about 1,500 people still live in the 5-kilometer zone from the border with Russia in the Sumy region.