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30
March
2023

Compulsory evacuation of remaining children from Avdiyivka planned next week – military administration head

KYIV. March 30 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Compulsory evacuation of six children from Avdiyivka, Donetsk region, who are still staying there and have been hidden by their parents from the authorities, volunteers, and police, will be carried out next week, Head of Avdiyivka Town Military Administration Vitaliy Barabash has said.

“It is not about taking the children away from their parents. At least one of them [the parents] must go together with his or her child. We gave them time (it’s been almost two weeks) – next week we are going to evacuate them by force. Unfortunately, we will act like this. We do not want to come to this, but when irresponsible parents put their children in mortal danger, we have nothing to talk about – we just have to take them and evacuate,” he said in an exclusive interview with the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency.

According to the official, representatives of the military administration, police, and volunteers involved in the evacuation “tried to give the people a chance to come to this point on their own by persuading each family day by day.”

“The problem is also that they hide their children and run away from us. We find them and agree that we will come tomorrow. Sometimes it seems we have managed to persuade them, and they already pack their suitcases, but then the White Angels [a special police unit in Donbas that helps to distribute food and evacuate the local population from the hottest spots] come to pick them up, they are gone – they changed location at night,” Barabash said.

He emphasized that there are six children still remaining in the town, although there were almost 50 children three weeks ago.

“We can see the dynamics. Although these six [children] – it’s like some kind of a magic number: this number has not changed for more than a week. In general, we evacuate one child every other day. In particular, we find children who were not on our lists. These are children who had been hidden or returned. I mean, they [the parents of the children] registered for evacuation, left, and then came back after a while,” the official said.