More than 700,000 people from the separatist regions of Danetsk and Luhansk, as well as other parts of Ukraine, have fled to Russia since February 24, a Russian military official said.
On Saturday alone, nearly 27,000 people fled the war-torn region of Russia, said Lt. Gen. Mikhail Mizinchev.
The top Russian official also said that 134,000 people had been rescued from Mariupol, in southern Ukraine, where fighting has been raging since early March.
According to the Russian state news agency TASS, Lt. Gen. Mizinchev again accused Kyiv of allowing the escape of civilians at risk of fighting due to areas only controlled by the Ukrainian authorities and not to Russian territory.
The numbers announced by Moscow are impossible to verify independently.
For its part, the Ukrainian government accuses the Russian side of deporting Ukrainians to its territory against their will, which is a violation of international law.
Even before what the Kremlin calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine began, thousands of citizens of self-proclaimed “democratic democracies” in the eastern part of the country fled to Russian territory as Moscow spoke of an imminent Ukrainian attack.
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