Ukraine orders evacuation from several eastern towns

Sinks Russian submarine in Crimea

August 05, 2024 00:00:00

Picture shows the submarine Ukraine sank — Reuters

KYIV, Aug 04 (AFP/BBC): Ukraine on Sunday announced the mandatory evacuation of children and their guardians from areas in the Donetsk region, where Russia has been claiming advances.

Just hours earlier, Russia said its forces had seized a nearby village, after claiming a string of villages in recent weeks-many just consisting of a few streets.

"The enemy is bombing the towns and villages of these communities every day, so it was decided to evacuate children with their parents or other legal representatives," Donetsk governor Vadym Filashkin said, listing the towns and villages to be evacuated.

Filashkin cited the town of Novogrodovka, which is about 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the village of Novoselivka Persha that Russia claimed to have captured on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's military says it attacked and destroyed a Russian submarine while it was anchored at a port in the occupied Crimean peninsula.

The Rostov-on-Don, a kilo-class attack submarine launched in 2014, sank after it was struck in a missile attack on the port city of Sevastopol on Friday, Ukraine's general staff said in a statement.

It was reportedly one of four submarines operated by Russia's Black Sea fleet capable of launching Kalibr cruise missiles. The Russian defence ministry has not commented.

Officials in Kyiv said the attack also destroyed four S-400 air defence systems protecting the peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

Intelligence officials in the UK noted last September that the Rostov-on-Don "likely suffered catastrophic damage" in a missile strike while undergoing maintenance at a Sevastopol shipyard.

Ukraine's military said Russia subsequently repaired the vessel and it was recently testing its capabilities near Sevastopol. The vessel was worth $300m (£233m), they added.

"The destruction of Rostov-on-Don once again proves that there is no safe place for the Russian fleet in the Ukrainian territorial waters of the Black Sea," the general staff in Kyiv said in a statement on Saturday.