Russo-Ukrainian War: the dangerous and terrifying odyssey of escape under the roar of bombing

To the frightening soundtrack of air-raid sirens and the roar of artillery, civilians fled towns and cities in eastern Ukraine as Russian forces advanced.

Up the narrow staircase of apartment buildings, volunteers carry the elderly and sick, on stretchers or in wheelchairs to waiting minibuses that take them downtown before boarding evacuation trains to other cities.

“The Russians are there, and they’re getting closer,” Mark Poppert, an American volunteer working with the British NGO RefugEase, said during an evacuation in Bakhmut on Friday.

“Right now, Bakhmut is a high risk area“He added.” We are trying to bring out as many people as we can in case the Ukrainians retreat. “

He and other Ukrainian and foreign volunteers working with the local NGO Vostok SOS, which coordinates the evacuation operation, are expected to evacuate nearly 100 people from Bakhmut on Friday, Poppert said.

A few hours before, at the northern end of the city, the sound of the roar of artillery and there were plumes of black smoke.

Bakhmut is in the Donetsk region, in the industrial east of Ukraine. Along with the neighboring Luhansk region, they form the Donbas, where Moscow -backed separatists have controlled part of the territory for eight years.

A delicate and painful flight

The evacuation process was careful, tough on the body, and full of emotion.

Many of the evacuees are elderly, ill or have severe movement problems.so volunteers had to place them on soft stretchers and move slowly through the narrow corridors and stairs of the buildings.

Most of Bakhmut’s population has fled: of its 85,000 pre -war residents, only 30,000 remain. And every day more are leaving.

Fighting intensified north of Bakhmut as Russian forces redoubled their efforts to capture Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, two major cities 50 kilometers (30 miles) to the northeast. They are the last place in Ukrainian hands in Luhansk.

Northwest of Bakhmut in Donetsk, Russian -backed rebels said on Friday they had hijacked the town of Lyman, a major railway hub near the cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, both of which are under kyiv control. On Thursday, smoke was clearly visible coming from Lyman from Slovyansk.

But despite the bombing, the missiles and the advance of the Russian army, the evacuation was not easy.

Those who do not want to leave

Svetlana Lvova, 66, who manages two residential buildings in Bakhmut, snorted and rolled her eyes in anger when she heard another of her tenants refuse to leave.

“I can’t convince them to leave,” he said. “How many times have I told them that when someone falls here, I will take them, wounded, on the same buses” that came to evacuate them today.

The woman tried to convince the protesters in every possible way, she said, but nearly two dozen people did not give up. They are more afraid to leave their homes and property for an uncertain future than to stay and deal with bombs.

He himself will stay in Bakhmut with his wife, he said. But not because they are afraid to leave their belongings, but because they are waiting for the return of their son, who is still in Severodonetsk.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I have to know he’s alive. That’s why I’m staying here.”

Lvova plays the last video she sent him, in which she says she’s fine and that in the city there is electricity but no water.

“I baed him a big cake,” he said, wiping away tears.

Poppert, the American volunteer, admitted that it is common to receive an evacuation request and change people’s minds when the van arrives.

“For these people, leaving the only world they know is an incredibly difficult decision,” he said.

He recounted how a man in his 90s was taken from the only home he met: “We removed this man from his world. He was scared of bombs and missiles, and he was afraid to leave.”

In nearby Pokrovsk, ambulances are waiting to load elderly women on stretchers and wheelchairs onto an evacuation train heading west, far from the fighting. Families go around, towing suitcases and putting their pets in vehicles.

The train began to move slowly away from the station and a woman pulled a curtain on one of the windows. As the familiar scene receded, her face twisted in pain and tears began to flow.

Source: AP

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