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Donbas evacuation call as Luhansk fell
Summary
A look back at 5 July 2022, when Donetsk Oblast's governor urged civilians to leave and a Ukrainian mathematician won the Fields Medal.
What did a single day look like in a country fighting on its eastern front and still producing world-class science? On 5 July 2022, the answer ran from the shelled towns of Donetsk Oblast to a congress hall in Helsinki.
Warning from Donetsk Oblast
On 5 July 2022, the Governor of Donetsk Oblast urged civilians to evacuate as Russian forces advanced. Around 350,000 civilians had already left the region by then. The same day, Ukraine reported that two civilians were killed in a Russian missile attack on Sloviansk.
Sloviansk had already come under heavy fire. On 3 July 2022, the city's mayor reported that six people were killed and many others injured when rocket launchers shelled the city.
The fall of Luhansk Oblast
The appeal came two days after Russian forces and those of the separatist Luhansk People's Republic captured the whole of Luhansk Oblast, on 3 July 2022, following the seizure of Lysychansk. Ukrainian forces confirmed that they had been forced to retreat.
Lysychansk and its twin city Sievierodonetsk had been the two largest cities in the oblast not under Russian control by May 2022. Russian forces launched an assault on Sievierodonetsk that month, and fierce fighting lasted until late June, when Ukrainian troops withdrew. Russian forces then began attacking Lysychansk across the Donets River.
Violence across the border
The war also reached Russian territory in those days. On 3 July 2022, three people were killed by explosions at residential buildings in Belgorod, Russia, near the border with Ukraine. Fifty buildings were partially destroyed.
A different kind of news from Helsinki
On 5 July 2022, the International Mathematical Union awarded the Fields Medal to four mathematicians at the quadrennial International Congress of Mathematicians in Helsinki, Finland. They were Hugo Duminil-Copin of France, June Huh of the United States, James Maynard of the United Kingdom and Maryna Viazovska of Ukraine.
The award to Viazovska came on a day when the news from her country was dominated by evacuation appeals and shelling in Donetsk Oblast. It placed a Ukrainian name among the year's winners of one of mathematics' most prominent prizes.
