Fresh Russian advances in eastern Ukraine send locals fleeing

By Max Hunder

POKROVSK, Ukraine (Reuters) - Sitting in a spartan, third-class train carriage about to leave Pokrovsk's railway station in eastern Ukraine, Volodymyr Arkhipov reflected on the grinding Russian advances which this week forced him to flee his second home in two years.

"I hauled out a corpse where (the Russians) bombed us, a woman of 37 ... by the time we dug her up, she had suffocated," the 57-year-old told Reuters, describing his final days in the embattled town of Toretsk before being evacuated.

The heavy Soviet-era train jolted into motion, taking him and his 84-year-old uncle, Mykola Arkhipov, towards western Ukraine from Pokrovsk, where they had spent the night after arriving by bus from embattled Toretsk, 30 miles to the east.

The two men are part of a wave of people fleeing Russian advances on several fronts in the eastern region of Donetsk, as Moscow batters slowly through formerly solid Ukrainian defences.

Pressing home their advantages in manpower and weapons, Russian forces have fought their way towards major towns and supply routes in pursuit of their goal of full control of Ukraine's industrialized and mineral-rich Donbas.

One recent advance has allowed Russia to open a salient only 20 km (12 miles) from Pokrovsk, an important logistical hub and still home to about 60,000 people.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday that Pokrovsk was now Russia's main target.

Moscow has claimed control of four villages east of Pokrovsk in the last week. Ukraine did not comment on those claims.

Russian soldiers have reached the edge of Toretsk, where the regional governor said a week ago that only 3,500 people were left, just over 10% of the prewar population. More have since been evacuated by authorities and humanitarian organisations.

"The areas (on the outskirts) where they have entered have been levelled to the ground," recalled Volodymyr Arkhipov, who had fled there with his nephew from the eastern town of Rubizhne in April 2022, shortly before the Russians captured it.

LUCKIER THAN OTHERS

With friends to stay with in western Ukraine, the two men are luckier than many others who know no-one there.

Mykola, a former coal miner, stared out of the window as the landscape of his once-proud mining region zoomed past him.

Volodymyr glumly shared that he was originally from Russia and had moved to Ukraine aged 30 - a common story in eastern Ukraine, where many Russians migrated during the Soviet era to work in the region's factories and coal mines.

The Arkhipovs and others evacuated with them had looked dazed as they arrived from Toretsk at the shelter in Pokrovsk on Tuesday, carrying the few possessions they were able to take stuffed into suitcases and supermarket bags.

They gave harrowing descriptions of civilian death and destruction caused by intense shelling.

"We thought that our house had been hit. But instead, in the house next door, the roof was swept away," Lidiia Poliakova said.

The evacuees said the shelling was so intense that locals were no longer able to reach the town's cemetery to bury the dead and had to find patches of earth within the town instead.

Poliakova, 75, said she had to bury her daughter, who had succumbed to a long chronic illness, in this way.

"I found a (clear) spot and buried her under a tree," she said. "What else could I do?"

(Additional reporting by Vitalii Hnidyi; editing by Tom Balmforth and Philippa Fletcher)