Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during an interview with Reuters in Kyiv. Archival photoMOSCOW, March 11Vladimir Zelensky said on his Telegram channel that almost 40,000 people were evacuated from a number of Ukrainian cities on Thursday.
"One of the main tasks for us today there was the organization of humanitarian corridors — Sumy, Trostyanets, Krasnopolye, Irpen, Bucha, Gostomel, Izyum. On this day, we have already managed to take out almost 40,000 of our people, to give them safety — in Poltava, Kyiv, Cherkassy, Zaporozhye, Dnipro, Lvov", Zelensky said in a video message.
Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24 . President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine», to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» in Donbass. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces strike only at military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops, the civilian population is not in danger. With the support of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the DPR and LPR groups are developing an offensive. But the occupation of Ukraine is out of the question, the President of Russia emphasized.