Russian forces close in on key Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk. But fleeing is hard – even for those who can afford it

Pokrovsk, Eastern Ukraine (CNN) — The empty boxes are piling up on the floor as Halyna goes through her medical kit, taking out packs of pills and discarding any unnecessary packaging. She can’t afford to waste space. She’s running away and the journey ahead is long and risky.

Halyna, 59, and her husband Olexey, 61, are from Selydove, a town just south of Pokrovsk that’s near the current epicenter of the war in eastern Ukraine. They delayed leaving for as long as they could, staying even after all their friends were gone, hoping things would take a turn for the better.

But a few days ago, everything changed.

“The bombing was everywhere around us, all night. Our house is still intact, but it won’t be for long. Everything else has been damaged,” Halyna told CNN. “Our soldiers came and took us away,” she added.

A nurse and a miner, the couple are among tens of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing Pokrovsk and the surrounding towns as it becomes more and more likely that the city could become the next key battleground of the war in Ukraine.

Russian forces have been inching toward the city for weeks, but the situation has become critical in recent days. Moscow has been pushing hard to capture Pokrovsk even as it struggles to contain the Ukrainian incursion in the Kursk border region.

Pokrovsk is a strategic target for Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear that his goal is to seize all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Pokrovsk sits on a key supply road that connects it with other military hubs, and forms the backbone of Ukrainian defenses in the part of Donetsk region that is still under Kyiv’s control.

The front line is now so close that the fighting is audible in the city center. The unmistakable deep thuds of explosions can be heard coming from the suburbs. Every now and then, there’s the whizz of Ukrainian counter strikes, fired from farther inland, going over the city trying to strike Russian positions to the east.

Serhiy Dobryak, the head of Pokrovsk’s military-civilian administration, has been working non-stop in recent days, desperately trying to convince people to evacuate before it becomes too dangerous or even impossible to do so.

“Most people leave voluntarily, some we have to persuade. We started mandatory evacuation for families with kids this week,” he said, adding that about 1,000 people are leaving every day.

But fleeing isn’t easy – even for people who can afford it.

Arina, 31, desperately wants to leave Pokrovsk. She and her husband worked as dentists in Selydove, which is now too dangerous to go to.

They are struggling to find a place to live. The problem seems to be their son David, a toddler.

“We started packing a week before they declared the mandatory evacuation (and) we are looking for an apartment, but nobody wants to let an apartment to people with kids, to refugees,” she told CNN.

“It feels like kids are considered animals, especially if they are younger than three. The landlords only allow children older than six or seven or they offer horrible apartments for any price they want,” she said, sitting on a swing at a deserted playground in Pokrovsk.

David was playing in the sandbox, oblivious to what was happening around him. He ditched his sandals and was running around barefoot, looking overjoyed to have all the toys to himself.

Arina took him to the playground to shield him from the chaos at home, pretending everything was as it should be. On a sunny summer Saturday, the playground would normally be bursting with families with kids. But nothing is normal in Pokrovsk now.

David is almost 3 years old, born just a few months before the start of the full-scale invasion. He knows nothing but the war. “He only started to react to the explosions two months ago. I tell him it’s fireworks, I don’t want to tell him what is happening. But I’ve written ‘There is a war’ in his baby album,” she said, tears flooding her eyes. Arina quickly wiped them away, not wanting David to see her cry.

People have to keep living, she said.

Like for many others in the area, the war didn’t start two and half years ago for Arina. She was in medical school in Donetsk in 2014, when Russia forcibly annexed Crimea and Russian-sponsored separatists took over large swathes of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Some 2 million people, including Arina, were forced to flee their homes.

“You get used (to running away). And it’s horrible that you can get used to such a thing. You have to adapt to a new reality all the time. First you fall into depression and panic. Try to start a life in a new place. You live and live and then you wake up at five in the morning from (missiles and rockets) flying over your head,” she said.

Donetsk region’s police officer Pavlo Dyachenko, has spent the past few weeks coordinating evacuations from Pokrovsk and other towns in the area.

He said his main problem is that to many people, it still doesn’t seem that bad. Compared with images from other cities under attack, Pokrovsk is still relatively calm. People here have a routine. They are out and about in the mornings, getting supplies and running errands. By mid-afternoon, the streets are deserted. Everybody here knows that drones are most likely to strike later in the day.

Most big supermarkets and shops have now closed, but smaller businesses remain open – including a small restaurant popular with the locals that is owned by Yulia, 34.

She and her family – a husband and a daughter – are all packed up and ready to leave. They’ve shut their other restaurant in Pokrovsk but kept the one in the city center open.

“We keep working. We work, we have clients, our employees who live here, so we will stay for some time, of course we will not stay to the very end. We won’t wait till the horrible shelling. But for now it’s possible,” she told CNN.

This is not what Dyachenko wants to hear though.

“We explain to people that the situation can change very quickly. I try to tell them personal stories of people we had to evacuate after they got trapped in Bakhmut or Avdiivka,” Dyachenko told CNN. “In Selydove, it felt absolutely fine one day and then the glide bombs started coming,” he said.

Dyachenko told CNN his men won’t drag anyone out by force. But the operation gets riskier each day. Leaving Pokrovsk is easy, people can just drive or take an evacuation train. But just a few miles down the road, those who hesitated to leave are now being extracted by the police in armored vehicles, sometimes under fire.

“It gets more and more dangerous,” Dyachenko added.

Dobryak, the head of Pokrovsk military-civilian administration, said that previous experience from the region suggests about 10% of people tend to stay no matter what, so the city will continue providing critical services for as long as it can.

But given the fast advances of Russian forces toward the city in recent days, it seems more than likely that the fighting will get worse and could reach the heart of the city soon.

An officer from one of the Ukrainian brigades fighting in the area said they have been outnumbered and outgunned by Russian troops, some of whom are from the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic and know the area well.

But there are other problems too. The officer said that communication between the different brigades hasn’t been ideal and most of the defenses built in the area were not effective.

Dobryak said the city and regional administrations have been told by the military where and how to build defenses and fortifications – a process that started when Moscow launched the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

He said he is hoping Pokrovsk’s defenses can withstand the attack – but he knows it’s a tall order.

“Whatever fortification we have, they have 10 times more men and vehicles. Same with artillery rounds. We lost the momentum in the winter when we were not receiving the (US) aid package. But our heroic men fight with what they have,” he said.

Refugees not welcome?

Among the hundreds of anxious people crowding the city’s train station on Saturday afternoon, a few looked like they wanted to leave. Many were visibly exhausted and heartbroken, Pokrovsk being the only home they’ve ever known.

As the evacuation train prepared to pull out, many were crying, waving their last goodbyes to loved ones staying behind.

“Every day, every night, explosions. It was building up slowly, but getting louder and louder every day,” Oksana, 37, told CNN while waiting on the platform. She looked nervous, keeping one eye on her two daughters and the other on her mother Liubov.

Oksana’s husband Oleh, 34, was going to travel with them on the train, making sure they were safe. But he would then go straight back home. A miner, he needs to keep working – money is tight, and he can’t afford to leave his job.

“I’ll go if the mine shuts down and they tell us to go,” he said.

The family were hesitant to leave Pokrovsk because Liubov, 70, recently suffered a stroke and is now unable to speak or walk. When three police officers in body armor and helmets carried her up into the train, she looked completely stoic, her face showing no sign of emotion.

“It just became too dangerous here. The authorities and the girls’ school were convincing us to go, most of our friends are also going,” Oksana said, adding that at the end, she wanted her children – Hanna, 14, and Dasha, 9 – to be settled in a new place by the time they go back to school in a week’s time.

Like most children in the region, the two have been attending online classes during the war. In-person education is too dangerous around here. Earlier this month, a school in Pokrovsk that had been turned into a shelter was hit by two Russian rockets. It now stands in ruins.

Dasha is about to start fourth grade and between the war and the Covid pandemic before that, she has never experienced normal schooling. Yet her desires are just the same as those of any youngster anywhere.

“When we have our own house, we will get a dog and a cat,” she said, pointing to the promise her parents have made for after the war. The dog will be a poodle, Dasha said. “The name will depend on the color,” she added.

But even as the front line rolls closer and closer, some are still not convinced they will leave. Many don’t have anywhere to go; some feel unwelcome in the rest of Ukraine.

At a butcher shop near the Pokrovsk train station, Oksana, the shopkeeper, says she doesn’t think she’d be able to leave. “I have two dogs and I am feeding all of the dogs around here, I have my work, my mother who is over 80 years old and can barely walk, I can’t leave,” she told CNN.

“Of course the authorities are asking us to leave, but where can we go? We don’t have any friends or family that we could stay with, and nobody wants to let an apartment to people with animals,” she said.

Oksana, 47, and several other women in the shop said they felt abandoned. Donbas, the area that spans the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, has always been culturally different compared to the rest of the country, its economy powered by mining and heavy industry. Flourishing before the events of 2014, the region took a hit when the war started.

Many Ukrainians blamed the people in the Donbas region for the war – especially since some local residents did initially welcome the pro-Russian separatists with joy.

“We were only united when it was Kyiv. Kyiv is crying – the whole country is crying. When Donbas is being pounded and we are being pounded for a long time, there is no word about united Ukraine,” she said.

Like most people in Donbas, Oksana is a Russian speaker – another thing that sets her apart from western Ukrainians.

“They say it’s Putin’s language. I am Ukrainian and I speak Russian, it’s my language and I speak it, even though I understand Ukrainian too,” Oksana said, adding that she cannot imagine leaving Pokrovsk, her home for 25 years.

Sitting on a bench surrounded by bags and suitcases, Halyna and Olexey said they didn’t have a choice. Not leaving was not an option.

“There is no power, no water, the gas was disconnected a long time ago. There were explosions everywhere, everything was destroyed,” Olexey said, waiting for a car to pick him and Halyna up.

They are determined to return. They are going to Italy to join their daughter, who has been living there since 2022. They haven’t seen their granddaughter in over two years and are afraid she won’t understand them, as she now goes to an Italian school. Halyna said she was looking forward to seeing her daughter and granddaughter again, of course, but is categorically opposed to living in Italy forever.

“I don’t want to live in Italy. I want to live in the country that I was born in. I want to live here, in my home, in Ukraine,” Halyna said. “I don’t know Italian, I don’t know English, when we get there, I won’t be able to go anywhere without my daughter. I don’t want that,” Olexey added.

The next morning, just 24 hours after fleeing their home, Olexey and Halyna found themselves lost in Dnipro. Used to their lives in a small town, the couple was trying to navigate the big city, looking for a cash machine.

They were struggling to come to terms with their new reality.  They are refugees now.

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