Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that his government had mandated the evacuation of the eastern Donetsk region.

Zelenskyy stated in a late-night television address that the tens of thousands of people who remained in conflict zones in the broader Donbas region, which includes Donetsk and the neighboring Luhansk region, must leave and that those who do will be compensated.

Separately, domestic Ukrainian media sites quoted Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk stating that the evacuation must occur before winter due to the destruction of the region's natural gas supplies.

Zelenskyy stated that hundreds of thousands of civilians still reside in Donbas regions where conflict is intense.

On Friday, Ukraine's military reported that over one hundred Russian soldiers had been killed and seven tanks destroyed in fighting in the south. The fighting occurred in the Kherson region, the focal point of Kyiv's counteroffensive in that part of the country and a vital link in Moscow's supply lines.

The military's southern command stated that rail transportation to Kherson over the Dnipro River had been halted, potentially isolating Russian forces west of the river from supplies in Crimea and the east.

South of the town of Bakhmut, which Russia has identified as a critical objective in Donetsk, the Ukrainian military reported that Russian forces had established "partially successful" over the settlement of Semyhirya by storming it from three angles.

Russia reported on Saturday that more than 26,500 people were evacuated from Donbas to Russia and that more than 2,900,000 people have been evacuated since its "special military operation" began in February.