Inside the Ukrainian city, while the Russian forces progress

As he prepares to go to another rescue mission on the Eastern Front of Ukraine, 35-year-old Anton Yaremchuk is grateful for the fog. This will protect him and his colleague Pilip from Russian drones hunting from the sky. His armored van will provide more protection – but only to a point. Any trip can be the last.

In December, a drone attack was torn apart through a clearly marked armored vehicle used by his team, causing injuries but without death.

“We were extremely lucky,” he says.

Anton’s regular destination nowadays is the industrial city of Pokrovsk, which he believes is “attacked night and day”.

The Russian forces are closing – now they are less than 2 km (1.2 miles).

“The last few days we went into, there was hell,” Anton tells us. “There are still about 7,000 people. We’ll try to get some people out of this nightmare.”

He did just that after the full -scale invasion of Moscow in February 2022.

With his attack in his country, the Ukrainian cinematographer left his life and career in Berlin, and co -founded a small UA base organization. Since then, he and his team have been able to remove about 3,000 civilians out of harm by taking them from front lines to more festive areas.

Pokrovsk was one of these places.

“This is crazy,” he says as we head to the city, “because it was the asylum, the most secure city in the region and the largest hospital. The evacuation train was leaving from Pokrovsk.”

If and when the Russian forces take the city, it will deprive Ukrainian military of a key supply and transportation center.

Ukraine has already lost production from a crucial coal mine in the area – the only one that produces coal buckets for its steel industry. The operations were stopped last month because of the advance of the Russian.

We join Anton for the trip to Pokrovsk. He has a turnstile and a separate medical set attached to the front of his armor. His white high -visibility jacket brings the slogan “Leave no one behind.”

There is a warning before we leave. “When we park, get out of the vehicles and not stand around,” Anton tells us, “In case they are directed.”

The closer we get even more explosions we hear. The war left its mark, draining the city of life. The streets are empty and the houses are boarding. Some buildings are flattened. There is no smoke of chimneys on snowy cuts. We pass a parked car with a white flag.

But we find Olga, who is already waiting by the road wrapped in a winter coat and a fluffy hood. This time she is one of six people on Anton’s list of evacuation.

She goes to lock her home – she moves fast, despite 71 years. And then she enters the van and doesn’t look back.

“I’ve been in this house for 65 years,” Olga says.

“It’s hard to leave everything behind. But it’s no longer life like hell.

Her children and grandchildren have already escaped the bombing. I ask if he thinks he will be able to return one day. “Who knows,” she replies, “But we hope.”

Along the way, every time Anton notices the people on the street – and there are not many – he calls them to go. He stops the car from handing out leaflets, explaining that the evacuation is free and the aid, including a place of stay and current payments, is available in the city of Pavlokhrad to the west. But some are difficult to convince themselves.

“I have to stay,” says an elderly woman. “My son has died and I must be close to his grave.”

“I don’t think he would like it,” Anton says.

We drive and transmit a group of three who collected water. Anton calls another warning. “There will be street battles,” he says, “Unfortunately, I promise you this. I have been doing this from the first day. The same is the same.

One of the women goes out to take a leaflet. “God keeps you,” she tells him before she goes on her way.

Anton moved quickly from address to address. When there is no answer in a house, it climbs a high metal gate to explore. He fucks. He shouts. He talks to a neighbor. Without any signs of the woman he hoped to evacuate, we are going.

I ask what 2025 expects, now President Trump is returning to the White House and insists on peace talks.

“I stopped looking too much ahead,” he says. “I think no one really knows what will happen. I personally do not think that even if any negotiations will start, they will bring the fire to be stopped soon.”

More than that, he expects that the fight will get worse if the conversations begin, as both sides will try to win leverage.

The last pickup of the day is 75-year-old Luba-white hair, peeps under a scarf. Her long life is now compressed in several plastic bags. It seems deprived and trembles with every explosion we hear.

“It was bad,” she tells me. “Bad. We were left alone. There are no authorities. People are just killing themselves under the sky,” she says, gesturing upwards. “No gas, no water, no electricity.”

Lyuba is aided in the van that is already full, with five adult evacuation – their memories and their fears – and a black cat peeking from a pet carrier. Nobody talks.

For Anton, this is a familiar photo, but still painful.

We first traveled with him In the height of summer in 2022, he evacuated civilians from another first -line city – Lisichansk – while Russian shells were raining.

Now, in the third winter of the war in Ukraine, he – other volunteers – are still trying to ahead of moving front lines and save the one who can.

“To be honest every time I see this, I break down,” he says, “because these are only those innocent people who leave everything behind them. These are human tragedies and you can never get used to it. But I’m glad, that we manage to bring people to safety.

This comes at a price and increases.

Ever since we traveled to Pokrovsk, one of Anton’s teams has fled under a Russian drone. A 28-year-old British volunteer lost his hand and leg-saving civilians-now he is stable in hospital.

After the attack, Anton’s group stopped evacuations from Pokrovsk and other front zones.

A Ukrainian police unit, called the White Angels, is still doing rescue missions in the city. We are told that “they try to be very cautious and careful.”

Inside the city, in the freezing basements and the units of homes, the other inhabitants – mostly adults – are at the mercy of Russian bombs and artillery as they wait for Pokrovsk to fall.

Additional reporting from Wietske Burema, Goktay Koraltan and Volodymyr Lozhko