Over the past day, two dead have been delivered.
What we see on the field testifies to the brutality of the battle for Pokrovsk – an important transport hub. The railway that passes through it was regularly used to evacuate civilians from front-line cities to safer areas of Ukraine and to transport goods for the army.
Ukraine knows what is at stake here.
The threat of Russian drones is always there – one is hovering over the medical unit while we’re there. This makes evacuation from the front line very difficult. The building’s windows are boarded up so drones can’t see inside, but the minute someone walks out the door, they risk being shot down.
Drones pose a threat to other residents of Pokrovsk.
“We constantly hear them buzzing – they stop and look in the windows,” says 50-year-old Viktoria Vasilevskaya, one of the war-weary residents left behind. But even she now agreed to evacuate from the house, which is located on the particularly dangerous eastern outskirts of the city.
She was surprised by how quickly the front line was moving west towards Pokrovsk.
“Everything happened so fast. Who knows what will happen here. My nerves are giving out. I’m having panic attacks. I’m afraid of the night.”
Victoria says that she has almost no money and will have to start from scratch in another place, but staying here now is scary.
“I want the war to end. There must be negotiations. There is still nothing left on the lands taken by Russia. Everything is destroyed, all the people have run away,” she says.
