Ukraine has asked residents of Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region to leave their city as Russia tries to reclaim the region it left last year.

Kharkiv’s military administration called on families and people with “limited mobility” to leave due to “continuous” shelling from Russian troops.

Russia captured the city, a major supply hub, at the start of its invasion a year ago, and Ukraine liberated it last September.

Kupyansk is about 130 kilometers north of Bakhmut, the site of ongoing Russian-Ukrainian clashes in recent months.

In Kupyansk, the Kharkiv regional military command said the evacuation order was due to an “unstable security situation” caused by Russian shelling of the city and its environs.

It says the evacuees will be provided with assistance, including accommodation, food, humanitarian aid and medical assistance. He added that other citizens are allowed to leave the territory. The pre-war population of the city was about 25,000 people.

The mayor of Kupyansk, Andrey Besedin, told the British Guardian newspaper: “The shelling is intensifying, there are more victims, so now we are focusing on the removal of children and people with disabilities.”

He added that “we hoped that the threat would disappear after the fall and we could start rebuilding, as in other areas. However, Kupyansk can still be approached with artillery and artillery shells, so we must act wisely and plan until the moment comes when the front line is thrown back.

Kupyansk, a major rail junction, has seen fierce fighting since the start of the war, with Russia taking control within days of February 27, 2022 and occupying the city for just under seven months.

In September, Ukrainian forces regained control of the city in a swift counteroffensive in the east of the country that brought several cities back under Kyiv’s control.

Source: BBC, The Guardian.