Vereshchuk on forced evacuation: Enemy uses local population in combat zone as human shield
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories Iryna Vereshchuk said that civilians are being forcibly evacuated from the combat zone because the local population is being used as human shields by the occupiers.
This was reported by Censor.NET with reference to Ukrinform.
Forced evacuation from the combat zone
"There is a problem when there is a lack of legislation, and our military spoke about it, to evacuate the adult population by force, and our military today clearly stated that the civilian population prevents our Defense Forces from carrying out operations, taking the steps necessary to repel the enemy. The enemy uses the local population as a human shield, the enemy encourages in every possible way through its propaganda information to keep people on the front line and thus make it impossible to conduct certain operations that our Armed Forces need," Vereshchuk said.
According to her, the military insists on evacuating "the entire civilian population, not just families with children, from those settlements where hostilities are taking place, where the Defense Forces are deploying defensive lines."
The Vice Prime Minister called for listening to the military.
According to her, such an evacuation should take place upon notification of the military for each individual settlement, and the evacuation should be organized by the regional defense council. Such evacuation should be mandatory.
"We are in martial law. And we have direct subordination. If the military has designated this area, there should be no people there, neither adults nor children," said Vereshchuk.
Legal framework for forced evacuation
At the same time, she noted that there are currently no legislative mechanisms for such evacuations, and it is impossible to resolve this issue by government decrees.
"We are talking about human rights, but we are also talking about bringing to justice when it comes to property rights. All this must be foreseen. Therefore, I would like to emphasize that we need to amend the relevant law," said Vereshchuk.
She added that the government will immediately begin to develop the necessary amendments to the legislation.
She clarified that the military will determine which settlements need to be evacuated and then address the regional defense council and the Evacuation Coordination Headquarters under the Cabinet of Ministers.
Earlier, Iryna Vereshchuk stated that 6 million Ukrainian citizens, including 1.5 million children, remain in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
