UKRAINE, KHARKIV OBLAST, July 3 — In Sotnytskyi Kozachok, after the Russian sabotage group approached, people who wanted to leave the village were forced to walk to the evacuation site, reported the evacuation coordinator of the Coordination Humanitarian Center, Oleh Ivanov, during a briefing.

Border towns and villages of the Kharkiv Oblast come under massive Russian artillery shelling and airstrikes often, even more so since Russia launched a new ground offensive north and northeast of the region in the Vovchansk and Lyptsi directions in May. 

Oleh Ivanov said volunteers could not get to the village and pick up people because of the dangerous situation.

“I emphasize that people need to leave even if there is no mandatory evacuation. Because border settlements are a kind of gray zone that can become a war zone at any time. It is not a problem for the enemy to enter Sotnytskyi Kozachok and conduct active hostilities there. But it is a problem for us to evacuate the population from there,” Ivanov said.

Andrii Demchenko, the spokesman for the State Border Guard Service, said on Ukrainian TV on June 27 that at night, Ukrainian border guards detected and repelled a Russian sabotage group on the border of the Kharkiv region near the village of Sotnytskyi Kozachok, Zolochiv community.

Oleh Syniehubov, Kharkiv Oblast Governor, said during a briefing on May 30 that the Russian army is considering the Zolochiv direction as one of the most suitable for an attempt to stretch the Ukrainian military in the north of the Kharkiv region.

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