00:00 Ukraine this hour where over 6,000 people have fled their homes in the northeast of the country
00:05 after Russia launched a surprise incursion across the border on Friday
00:10 in one of the most significant ground attacks since the invasion began in February of 2022.
00:16 Well let's cross live to Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city. Our reporter Emmanuel Shasz is there,
00:22 she joins me on the programme. Emmanuel, just tell us then what is the situation
00:28 on those new front lines to the north of where you are?
00:30 Well by the admission of the Ukrainian army the situation is very difficult, very tense.
00:38 All along those villages, those settlements located in the grey zone, this is a zone
00:45 just at the border with Russia. It's been a few days now that Russia launched a new
00:50 attempted ground offensive against those settlements, settlements that had already
00:56 been occupied back in 2022 and liberated the same year a few months after in September.
01:01 And you've mentioned it, those fights affect civilians, over 6,000 people had to be evacuated
01:11 from that area with many of them taking shelter here in Kharkiv, where I am.
01:17 And you're talking to us not just from Kharkiv city but from a centre for some of those people
01:24 who've been displaced. Tell us about where you are, what you've seen and the people that you've met today.
01:29 Absolutely, I'm here Nadia in a reception centre, that means that
01:36 every person being evacuated from the front line, from those zones of active fighting,
01:42 come here and maybe you can see behind me people who are coming at this stage. They're mostly
01:49 elderly people who couldn't leave their houses earlier and who only did so because they had no
01:55 choice left. And it's not the first time, it's the second time that Kharkiv sees an influx of
02:01 internally displaced people because the first time was in 2022 during the first ground offensive
02:07 launched by Russia. This is just an offensive repeating itself and the inhabitants had already
02:15 been through that the first time, second time here and the situation is very dire with hundreds of
02:20 people coming here every day in need for shelter, in need for things, for clothes, for food because
02:27 they've left everything behind. Emanuela is speaking to us there from Kharkiv, that is as I mentioned
02:33 the second biggest city in Ukraine. It's receiving displaced people now as a result of that new
02:40 Russian offensive that began on Friday. Now today the Ukrainian army acknowledging that Russia has
02:47 in its own words currently achieved some tactical successes given what happened over the weekend.
02:54 Well Emanuela Shah is still with me, still at that reception centre Emanuela for those who've
03:00 been fleeing this latest offensive and I know that you're actually with
03:04 the head of that centre so let's hear from him.
03:07 Absolutely I'm here and Nadia joined by Yevgen Koliada, he's the head of this coordination
03:15 centre, reception centre and he can tell us more about the situation. Yevgen you've been here for
03:22 the past few days, what's the situation, what has been the situation like during those
03:26 harrowing days for everyone here? Yeah the situation is quite unstable now and it's always
03:33 changing. We are working, we are coordinating more than 70 NGOs and CSOs presented in the region now
03:40 which are working with evacuation. We have two main ways, it's a walk, shine, scan,
03:45 leaps away. For now volunteers on the first stage that we divided them into stages, in the first
03:52 stage they are working under shell and always in the dangerous zones, they are taking their lives
03:58 into risk and they are taking people from the territories, from the households. We have a
04:03 general hotline of evacuation, we are sending them the request and they are working with the
04:09 small teams, mobile response teams. After that they send people to big transit, I mean big buses
04:16 and these big buses are sending people here. This is the general transit point so here we have
04:22 multi-sectoral support of evacuees presented by international and local agencies, by humanitarian
04:30 actors. So according to the situation for now we are on duty and we are feeling we are quite
04:37 flexible and volunteers are working not only in the day but also in the night and this transit
04:42 center is working 24/7. Center working 24/7 and as I was mentioning it's mostly elderly people,
04:50 elderly people, disabled people who are coming to us. Can you explain to us why there were the ones
04:56 left behind? Yeah, before that we evacuate all the kids from the Ramadas according to the mandatory
05:02 and obvious evacuation. So for now we don't expect any kids here, we expect, we see here mostly
05:09 it's elderly and disabled people and also it's a challenge to accommodate them because we need a
05:15 special collective centers to accommodate them for them. But also we have young people and also we
05:22 have special NGOs and CSOs who is working with evacuation of pets, animals and also special
05:30 vehicles for disabled people. With the transport there's no challenges here, with the logistics,
05:34 with the volunteers, with the human resources it's okay. But with the collective center special one
05:39 is quite challengeable because we are communicating with international agencies and with OSHA also
05:45 to provide the material, technical support for that collective centers to make a comfortable
05:51 accommodation for the people in Kharkiv region. You were mentioning this accommodation earlier,
05:56 you were telling me about Kharkiv being a student city, can you elaborate on that?
06:00 Yeah, Kharkiv is a capital of student, it's a student capital of Ukraine. We have a lot of
06:05 campuses, student campuses here and hopefully that they are used now as a collective center. So for
06:11 now in Kharkiv we have 300 empty places for evacuees in the city of Kharkiv and 844 empty
06:18 places in the Kharkiv region. Especially this is the most safety territories like Lozova, like
06:23 Marefa, it's a small town near to the city of Kharkiv but closer to a central part of Ukraine.
06:29 So here we are prepared for the regular evacuation and it's not only from this way we evacuate
06:37 people, we also have planned evacuation from Kupinsk region, from Izum, from everywhere so
06:42 everyone can call for a hotline, it's free of charge and they can be evacuated in 24 hours.
06:48 Yevgeny Koliada, thank you very much. That was Yevgeny Koliada, he's the head of that reception
06:56 center here in Kharkiv. He was telling me earlier that we got several hundred people who already
07:00 arrived here and they continue to arrive throughout the day and well into the night as well because
07:07 it's a 24-hour, seven evacuation process that is ongoing in Kharkiv region.
