"The buildings are burning. Pokrovsk is actually gone", says a Ukrainian. People from the region are evacuating, although most do not want to leave. The front is dangerously approaching Dobropilya. DW report.
"Our suitcases are ready", tells DW Natalia, who lives in the village of Svyatohorivka, near the city of Dobropilya, towards which the Russian army is advancing more and more. The Ukrainian army has managed to liberate several settlements, but neighboring municipalities remain under constant fire. Natalia has not left yet only because of her elderly parents, who refuse to evacuate. “My father says: I was born here and I will die here. And I ask him – who will bury you when you die?“.
The village of Svyatogorovka is deserted, only the volunteers from the “White Angel“ group are walking around, helping those who want to evacuate. As everywhere in the Donetsk region, here too, Russian troops are trying to cut off the roads for logistical support to the Ukrainians, attacking vehicles with drones. More and more corridors with nets to stop the drones are appearing between the settlements.
–But where will I live?“
The evacuation is dangerous, which is why volunteer David and policeman Ilya Maltsev travel in an armored car. They have to visit two addresses in Svyatogorovka. At the first one, 74-year-old Maria is waiting for them, barely able to walk with her cane.
“The drones are flying straight towards us, passing over our houses. I didn't want to leave - I told myself I was old, but life made me. It became unbearable - only one neighbor remained on our street, everyone else left.“
The second address is more difficult to find - the “White Angel“ has to track down 70-year-old Tatyana, who she eventually finds in an abandoned house. She moved there a week ago - after her apartment building in Dobropilya was destroyed in shelling. “My household goods stayed there“, Tatyana says.
She doesn't want to leave, but thanks the evacuation group. On the way, she wonders where she will receive her pension from now on. "Probably where you'll live," they tell her. "But where will I live?" Tatyana asks, confused.
"The situation has changed very abruptly"
The resettlement and accommodation of people from municipalities close to the front is no less complicated than their evacuation, says police officer Konstantin Tunitsky from "White Angel". He says that the evacuees first go to an intermediate point in the Donetsk region, from where volunteers take them to the Dnepropetrovsk region. There they are either put on trains or placed in a temporary shelter. However, this week the number of evacuees has significantly exceeded the places in the shelter, and some of the people have had to be accommodated in tents.
Several dozen evacuation requests are received from the Dobropilya region every day, says police officer Tunitsky. “The situation has changed very abruptly.“ And the evacuation team vehicles are not enough.
If the team cannot enter a settlement due to the great danger, he asks people to leave on foot, explains Tunitsky. He tells how from the village of Nikanorovka, where fierce fighting was taking place, two elderly people carried out a bedridden elderly woman on a wheelchair. They managed to contact the evacuation team and explained that when the Russian military arrived, they shot the bedridden woman's son and her neighbors, who were hiding in the basement. The three were the only survivors of the village.
"People quickly packed up and left"
People are leaving Dobropilya and its surroundings and by their own transport. They are putting white stripes on their cars to protect themselves from Russian drones. Natalia, who set off with her husband and cat, says: "Many of the houses have been destroyed, it's very scary in the city. People quickly packed up and left."
"I haven't decided what I'm going to do next," Natasha continues. To start with, she's going to go to her son in Ternopil. Her mother has stayed in Dobropil. "I couldn't convince her to leave," the woman says.
There are also people who refuse to evacuate - most often because their relatives who are worried about them, not them, Tunitsky explains. But even in these cases, the evacuation team tries to convince people to leave. "There will come a time when no one will be able to take them anymore. "And they will want to leave," he says.
"My advice is - save yourself"
56-year-old Oleg from Pokrovsk advises the others in Dobropilya to leave to save themselves. He has wounds on his face, a stitch above his eye, his hand is bandaged. He left Pokrovsk that morning on his bicycle. "I was lucky - I got away", Oleg says.
Three days earlier, a Russian attack drone had flown into Oleg's yard. "I thought it was nothing serious, but then a huge explosion went off," the man recalls. Neighbors helped him, but the man lost some of his sight. He decided to leave because the hospitals in Pokrovsk were no longer working. "The city is under constant fire. The buildings are burning. The city is basically gone," Oleg says. In June, his brother was killed by an artillery shell and buried next to the fence. "Many people are buried in the gardens," the man says.
"If anyone has any doubts, my advice is - leave," Oleg repeats. When the evacuation of Pokrovsk began last fall, he sent his wife and daughter to Odessa. "I stayed because of the property - "I built the house myself with my own hands. I held on to it, it didn't seem like life was any more precious," Oleg sums up. He packed his belongings into two bags and headed for his wife and daughter. They only just found out he was wounded - because he has no connection to Pokrovsk.