Ukrainian local authorities have issued a mandatory evacuation order for families with children from the eastern city of Pokrovsk, where about 53,000 people still live.

They say Russian forces are advancing so quickly that it is compulsory for families to leave the city and other nearby towns.

Russian troops have been pushing toward Pokrovsk for months.

Russian troops are “advancing at a fast pace. With every passing day there is less and less time to collect personal belongings and leave for safer regions,” officials warned last week, saying that the Russian forces were just six miles from the outskirts of Pokrovsk.

Pokrovsk residents have just two weeks to leave the city safely, officials said in an interview with the US-funded Radio Liberty.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week that Pokrovsk and other nearby towns in the Donetsk region are “facing the most intense Russian assaults”.

Russia’s slow drive across Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region this year has been costly in terms of troops and armour, but its gains have mounted.

Pokrovsk, which had a pre-war population of about 60,000, is one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds and a key logistics hub in the Donetsk region.

Its capture would compromise Ukraine’s defensive abilities and supply routes and would bring Russia closer to its stated aim of capturing the entire Donetsk region.

Pokrovsk officials were meeting with the residents to provide them with logistical details on the evacuation.

People were offered shelter in western Ukraine, where they will be hosted in dormitories and separate houses prepared for them.