KYIV: Ukraine has ordered the evacuation of thousands of children and their parents from frontline settlements in the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, where Russian troops have been advancing, a Ukrainian official said on Friday.

“Due to the difficult security situation, a decision was made to forcibly evacuate more than 3,000 children and their parents from 44 frontline settlements in the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions,” Restoration Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said on Telegram.

The evacuations, Kuleba said, were also ongoing in the northern Chernigiv region, which borders Moscow-allied Belarus and has been the target of Russian shelling.

“In total, 150,000 people have been evacuated from frontline areas to safer regions since June 1. Among them are nearly 18,000 children and more than 5,000 people with limited mobility,” Kuleba said.

Moscow’s forces, who invaded Ukraine in Feb 2022, have been grinding their way through the industrial Dnipropetrovsk region.

In the southern Zaporizhzhia region, Russian advances have been rarer than in the embattled east, but have accelerated in recent months.

Russia has in recent months claimed to have captured new settlements in both regions.

In Sept 2022, Russia claimed to have officially annexed the Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Lugansk and Kherson regions, although it did not claim full military control of all of them.

Highest gains for Russia

Russia’s battlefield gains in Ukraine last year were the highest since 2022, an analysis showed, as Kyiv was set to host security advisers from allied states on Saturday despite Moscow’s unrelenting strikes.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said around 15 countries would attend the talks, along with representatives from the European Union and Nato, and with a US delegation joining the meeting via video link.

Published in Dawn, January 3rd, 2026