Over 1,600 children evacuated from two Donetsk communities over the last month

Source: National Police of Ukraine

More than 1,600 children have been evacuated from the communities of Kostiantynivka and Illinivka, Donetsk region, over the past month, according to Ukraine’s policy statement. The evacuation figures show that out of the 2,300 minors residing in the Kostiantynivka community at the end of August, only around 700 remain.

Officials called for a mandatory evacuation of families with children on August 26 in Kostiantynivka and three days later in Illinivka. These measures helped to take the majority of the children to safer places.

Some families are choosing to leave on their own or using the help of volunteers, while others receive assistance from law enforcement. Police evacuation teams have to travel on armored vehicles while visiting  the families whose children have to be evacuated.

The first priority is to convince parents of the need to protect their children and explain the evacuation process. Russian shelling makes evacuation a dangerous undertaking.  Families and their children are taken to evacuation trains, while others are brought to shelters before volunteers help relocate them to new homes.

One of the police teams evacuated a family that has a disabled son when Russian troops dropped guided bombs, luckily they survived the attack and were later sent to a new home in the Cherkasy region.

Another successful rescue involved a family with a 12-year-old girl, a 2-year-old boy, and an immobile woman. They were evacuated minutes before their neigbors’ house was hit by a shell.