Russian occupiers are planning to evacuate residents of Kursk Oblast to temporarily occupied areas in Zaporizhzhia Oblast to shield their military facilities from attacks, according to Zaporizhzhia Oblast Head Ivan Fedorov.
Previously, the Governor of Russia’s Kursk Oblast, Alexei Smirnov, announced that evacuees from Kursk would be relocated to “sanatoriums and boarding houses on the coast of the Azov Sea, from Berdiansk to Kyrylivka” in occupied Zaporizhzhia.
Yevhen Balytskyi, the Russian-appointed occupation leader of Zaporizhzhia, reportedly made this offer.
“The occupiers claim that occupied Zaporizhzhia is ready to accommodate evacuees from Kursk and house them in rest bases.
However, there is no real intention to support these people. Instead, the enemy has a plan: they want to use civilians as human shields to protect their military facilities, making them harder to target,” Fedorov emphasized.
He noted that the occupiers have turned Ukrainian resorts along the Azov Sea into military bases where they store their equipment, despite these resorts having hosted up to five million tourists before the war.
Fedorov also sees a financial motive behind evacuating people from Kursk Oblast. In his view, the collaborators are not focused on rescuing people but on making a profit, as they have already requested additional funding from the federal budget.
“People are reluctant to agree to evacuation to Zaporizhzhia Oblast. They understand that this area will be liberated soon, so they see no point in relocating temporarily. The proximity to the front line heightens their fears,” Fedorov added.
Meanwhile, Ukraine plans to open humanitarian corridors to evacuate residents from Kursk Oblast. The country also intends to ensure access for representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the UN, and other impartial international organizations to the newly established “buffer zone” in the region.
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