Ukrainian police have rescued a family with three young children from Russian shelling in the settlement of New York in the Bakhmut Raion of eastern Ukraine.
The footage shows the family being evacuated by the Ukrainian forces, taking nothing but a suitcase and some bags with them, as an older woman, believed to be the children’s grandmother, gives them tender kisses goodbye.
The images were obtained from the National Police of Ukraine on Tuesday, 7th March, along with a statement saying: “The police evacuated a family with three children, the youngest one and a half years old, from Ukrainian New York.”
One of the children, called Veronika, 5, said: “It was scary, we held each other.”
The statement added: “So, together with her brothers, fourth-grader Timofey and baby Andriyk, the girl experienced Russian shelling. So that the children would not suffer any more, their mother Raisa agreed to the evacuation.”
Their mum Raisa, 29, said: “There is a lot of shooting, I started having heart problems, and the children are very scared. That way they will be better off.”
The statement continued: “The children miss a peaceful life. Until 24th February, Veronika went to kindergarten, Timofey went to school, but with the beginning of hostilities, the institutions stopped working.
“The policemen took the family from the shelling zone to a safe place. In the future, the woman and her children will be accommodated in Cherkasy with the help of volunteers.
“The police continue to take care of the children and organize their rescue together with Donetsk OVA. There are still 815 children left in the Toretsk community, 148 in New York.”
Ivan Kolmykov, inspector of the juvenile prevention sector of the Bakhmut RVP, said: “We received a list with the addresses of children living in the Torets community. They went around the families, found out if the children were really staying here and had conversations about the need for evacuation.
“Some have already agreed. How do we convince parents? We inform you how many children died and were injured as a result of the Russian aggression in Donetsk region.”
The statement added: “During the year of the full-scale war in Donetsk region, according to the Donetsk OVA, Russian troops killed at least 143 children. There are currently no accurate data from Mariupol and Volnovakha.”
New York, also spelt Niu-York, is a settlement in Ukraine’s Bakhmut Raion, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, that has existed since at least the mid-19th century.
The Soviets changed its name to Novhorodske in 1951 but after the beginning of the conflict in the Donbas in 2014, the local authorities and citizens worked to change the name back as part of a wave of “decommunisation” changes, with the settlement officially becoming New York again in 2015.
Russia invaded Ukraine on 24th February 2022 in what the Kremlin is still calling a “special military operation”. Today marks the 380th day of the full-scale war.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that between 24th February 2022 and 10th March 2023, Russia had lost about 156,990 personnel, 3,448 tanks, 6,742 armoured combat vehicles, 2,475 artillery units, 491 multiple launch rocket systems, 256 air defence systems, 304 warplanes, 289 helicopters, 2,107 drones, 907 cruise missiles, 18 warships, 5,337 motor vehicles and fuel tankers, and 240 units of special equipment.
Russia has claimed that its casualties have been much lower but provides infrequent updates on its latest figures.
At least nine people were reportedly killed yesterday in Russia’s largest wave of missile strikes in three weeks.
Ukraine’s Air Force said that Russia launched 81 missiles in total and eight Shahed drones. It said that it had shot down 34 missiles and four drones.
The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, has warned that urgent action is required to protect the safety and security of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
The facility was briefly disconnected from the grid as a result of Russian missile strikes grew.
The Russian Ministry of Defence said that the “massive retaliatory strike” was payback for a cross-border raid last week.
Grossi said: “Due to a series of attacks there had been a complete cut of the off-site power lines thereby [leaving] the plant without any source for its cooling systems, which are essential for the safety of the reactors.
“Hence the emergency generators kicked in – the largest nuclear power plant in Europe for the sixth time since the beginning of the war has been working on emergency diesel generators, which has been absolutely mindboggling.”
He added: “This proves again how fragile and terribly dangerous this situation is at Zaporozhzhia.
“The danger as I’ve been saying would be the reactors eventually when you stop having a cooling function, you eventually melt down thus leading to a major accident with severe radiological effects…
“Here we’re talking about six nuclear power reactors – the biggest site in Europe – so you can see how enormously incredible the situation is.”
Grossi also said: “Don’t shoot at a nuclear power plant.”
Ukraine appears intent on holding the eastern city of Bakhmut despite reportedly suffering an estimated 100 to 200 casualties every day.
Ukraine’s national security chief, Oleksiy Danilov, has said that one Ukrainian is killed for every seven Russians, adding that Ukrainian soldiers are killing as many as 1,100 of Moscow’s soldiers every day.
The President of Belarus, the authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko, has signed a bill that introduces capital punishment for government officials and members of the military who are convicted of high treason.
