‘Everything is left behind’: as Russians close in on Ukrainian city, families agonise whether to flee

Valeria Tanashchuk packed up a few last belongings from her home. Going in the evacuation van waiting outside: her daughter Nicole’s favourite bear, clothes, items of furniture and a microwave oven. Staying behind: her mother Marina’s collection of detective novels, a wall poster with the Ukrainian alphabet written on it, and a pair of furry slippers.

“We don’t want to leave. But would choice do we have?” Tanashchuk asked, as a thunderous boom echoed nearby. “The explosions get worse every day. They are louder and more frequent.” What would she do next? “I don’t have a concrete plan,” she said. “I will try and find work somewhere. We had hoped until the end that everything would be OK.”

Tanashchuk and her father Rasim, were saying goodbye to their home at number 6 Hirnyka Street for the last time. Her great-grandmother Dosya bought the property. For two-and-a-half years their city – Pokrovsk – had escaped the worst of the fighting that engulfed other parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, following Vladimir Putin’s 2022 all-out invasion.

In February, though, Russian troops began to creep closer. First they captured the city of Avdiivka, outside Kremlin-occupied Donetsk. Then they swallowed up neighbouring villages and settlements. Last week they were six miles away from Tanashchuk’s cottage, with its vegetable patch, walnut and pear trees, and attractive curling vine and roses.

“The garden was my passion. I planted blackberries and blueberries. We have potatoes and cucumbers. Everything is left behind,” she said. Two months ago she sent Nicole, seven, to live with her mother near the city of Dnipro. “When Nicole was here she was terrified. At night the bombs kept waking her up. Now she’s afraid for us. She pleads with us to get out,” she said.

Pokrovsk was once home to around 50,000 people. For more than a decade – after Putin seized parts of Donetsk oblast in 2014 – it has been a Ukrainian military centre, as well as a rail and road hub. Soldiers going to or coming from the front line swelled the population. The local economy flourished, with mobile phone shops, and a modern glass-fronted pizza restaurant.

Then the Russians started bombing. In August 2023 a missile flattened the Druzhba hotel, where foreign journalists used to stay, and the Italian café next door. Neighbouring apartments were damaged. In recent weeks more buildings in the city centre have been hit. Enemy planes have broken bridges in and around Pokrovsk, including a highway connecting the city with the adjacent town of Myrnohrad.

These days Pokrovsk is almost a ghost town. Most of its residents have left, heeding the advice of its military mayor Serhii Dobriak. He has told civilians to evacuate, pointing out that the situation will only get worse.

For now, electricity works. There is no gas. The Russians bombed the facility. The railway station closed last week. So have most businesses and the central hospital. Windows are boarded up with plywood. About 18,000 people remain. They include Tanashchuk’s 70-year-old neighbour Nikolai, who watched as volunteers loaded her possessions into a removal van, together with the family’s labrador Jayce. What would he do? “War is terrible. But I don’t think the Russians will touch me,” Nikolai said, lighting a cigarette with trembling hands. After a moment’s reflection, he hedged: “Maybe I will leave a bit later. I don’t know really.”

Many of those staying say they have no money to rent an apartment in expensive cities to the west, such as Pavlohrad or Dnipro. Pokrovsk’s outdoor market remains open, between the non-curfew hours of 11am-3pm. Locals arrive on bikes to stock up on cottage cheese, tomatoes and poultry. “This is our country. We don’t want to go anywhere. Why should we?” one stallholder, Alla, said as she swished flies from a plucked turkey.

Others are stuck because they are disabled. Valentina Dereviahina said she had to stay in Pokrovsk to care for her 42-year-old diabetic son, a wheelchair user. “We are still trying to get him a lift out,” she said, as she helped her 86-year-old mother Liudmyla climb into an evacuation minibus. Liudmyla went with her other daughter Maria. The van trundled off from their cottage in Pushkin street. Valentina cried and waved farewell.

Some leave it too late. Yuliia Sokol, the founder of the evacuation charity Starting Point, said her team had agreed to collect an elderly woman from the village of Lysivka, 10kms south-east of the city. “We spoke on the phone. The next morning Russian troops took over. We rang again to tell her it was too dangerous to fetch her. The line was dead. We are not always successful.” She added: “We see our job as a calling.”

She and her helpers pulled up outside a tower block in the south east of the city, close to Russian lines. There were loud booms. “It was noisy last night,” one resident, Olena, said, as she loaded her bag into the charity’s van. Olena said goodbye to her son Danylo, 25, who works in Pokrovsk’s mine and was staying behind. The mine supplies coal essential to Ukraine’s steel industry and remains open. Danylo promised to feed the block’s feral cats.

A few locals are waiting for the Russians to arrive. Oleksandr – a soldier fighting with Ukraine’s national guard, who is from Myrnohrad – estimated that five per cent of his town was pro-Putin, despite the fact that its districts were being bombed. “They watch Russian TV. They are not very successful. They drink beer, smoke cigarettes and say the state should give them money. Since they don’t get this from Ukraine they want Russia,” he said. Sometimes it is not clear where the enemy is. Earlier this month Oleksandr Humaniuk, founder of the Rose in Hand charity, drove to the frontline city of Ukrainsk, south-east of Pokrovsk. He and a colleague – dressed in body armour – went to pick up civilians. When they parked outside a residential building, a Russian soldier appeared. “What is the movement?” he asked them. Humaniak filmed the conversation.

The volunteers said they were getting people out. The Russian demanded to know where these civilians were. At that moment, an old lady emerged from a basement and hobbled towards them. “Get them in fast. And get the fuck out of here,” the soldier said. “He didn’t open fire,” Humaniak recalled. “It was a miracle. A lot of volunteers have died in these situations. I think an angel saved us. We left with two women and a man.”

Other encounters end tragically. Two days earlier Ukrainian soldiers tried to persuade residents to leave their homes in the same street, named after the Russian-Soviet writer Maxim Gorky. Some refused. That night, two Russian soldiers entered a cellar where about 20 residents were sheltering. There was a firefight. The Russians were killed, along with five civilians. The body of a woman was laid out the next morning, wrapped in a blanket.

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Humaniak’s fellow volunteer Ara Karapetyan said that he “liked adventures”. “I’m a bit crazy,” he said. Why was his arm in a sling? “I landed badly when an explosion knocked me over,” he replied. Karapetyan said that he had hoped that Ukraine’s incursion last month into Russia’s Kursk oblast would have relieved pressure on his home town of Vovchansk, which Russian troops seized in May. “The bitches are still there,” he said.

He conceded that Moscow’s advance across Donetsk oblast was likely to continue. More towns and villages would be smashed up, more civilians would be forced to flee. “Putin is nuts. He won’t stop with one oblast. He wants to take the whole of Ukraine,” Karapetyan said. “That’s why we have to destroy him.”

The volunteer added: “This is a war between good and evil. They want to kill people. We want to save them. I hope that good wins.”