As the Russian forces progress, the Ukrainians in Donbass must choose to stay or go

The white armored police van speed in the eastern Ukrainian city was a steel cell mounted on its body to protect it from Russian drones.

They had already lost a van, a direct impact from a drone to the front of the vehicle; The cell and powerful roof clogging equipment offer additional protection. But it is still dangerous to be here: the police, known as the white angels, wants to spend as much time in Balozar.

The small, quite mining city, just nine miles (14 km) from the front line, is slowly destroyed by the summer of Russia’s offensive. Local hospital and banks have long been closed. The plaster buildings on the city square are broken by drones attacks, the trees along its alleys are broken and split. Coquet rows villas with corrugated roofs and well -maintained gardens run along the windows of the car. Some are untouched, others burned shells.

It is a rough assessment that 700 residents remain in the Bleevity of a pre -war population of 16,000. But there is little evidence for them – the city already seems abandoned.

Approximately 218,000 people need evacuation from the Donetsk region, in Eastern Ukraine, including 16,500 children. The area, which is crucial to the country’s defense, carries the main burden of Russia’s invasion, including daily drones and rocket attacks. Some cannot leave, others do not want. Authorities will help the evacuation of those in the first line areas, but they cannot redirect them after being out of danger. And despite the increasing threat of Russian drones, there are those who would prefer to take risks than leave their homes.

Police are looking for the house of a woman who wants to leave. Their van cannot do it on one of the roads. So, on foot, a police officer goes looking, the joker of the drone Jamera, and his invisible defense retreat as he goes down a ribbon.

In the end, he finds the woman under the eaves of his cottage, a sign on her door, reading “people live here.” There are dozens of bags and two dogs. It is too much for the police to wear: they already have evacuated and their belongings stuffed inside the white van.

The woman is faced with choice – leave her belongings or stay. She decides to wait. There will soon be another evacuation team and they will take her belongings.

Staying or going is a calculation of life or death. The civil victims in Ukraine reached a three -year peak in July this year, according to the latest available data from the United Nations, with 1674 killed or injured. Most meet in first line cities. There was the highest number of short-distance drones killed and wounded by the start of the full-scale invasion, the UN said.

The nature of the threat to civilians in the war has changed. Where once artillery and missile strikes were the main threat, now they are confronted with first -person (FPV) pursued by Russian pursued by Russian drones (FPV), which follow and then hit.

As the police leave the city, an old man appears, pushing a bicycle. He is the only soul I see on the streets that day.

Most of those remaining in the first-line cities are older people who make up a disproportionate number of civilian victims, according to the UN.

He tells me to move from the side of the road, beyond the path of non -existent traffic. Volodymyr Romaniuk is 73 years old and risks his life for the two cookware he has collected on the back of his bike. His daughter -in -law was destroyed in a Russian attack, so he came today to save the pots.

Aren’t he afraid of drones, I ask. “What will it be, you will be. You know that at the age of 73 I am no longer afraid. I have already lived my life,” he says.

He is in no hurry to get off the streets. A former football referee, he slowly removes a folded card from his jacket pocket and shows me his official Collegium of Football referees. It has been since April 1986 – the month of Chernobyl’s nuclear disaster.

It is from the western part of Ukraine and can return there off the road. “I stayed here for my wife,” he tells me. She had many operations and would not be able to make the trip. And with that he leaves and heads to home to take care of his wife, the two metal pots on the back of his bike while moving along the blank street.

Slovyansk is further in front, 25 km and is confronted with a different threat of drones. Shad’s drones were called “flying mopeds” by Ukrainians because of their launch engines. The swarms of them often attack verbal. There is a change in the noise of the drone before diving and then burst.

At night, Nadia and Oleh Moroz hear them, but they will not leave a word. They have poured blood and sweat in this earth – and on their son’s grave, tears too.

Sergi is 29 years old, a lieutenant in the army killed by a cluster bomb near November 2022. He and his father Oleh first fought together in 2015 against the Russians in Donbass. They worked next to each other like sappers.

The tomb in the form of a trident of Sergi sits on a hill overlooking Slajansk, its portrait and map of Ukraine on the polished black stone.

Nadia, 53, visits frequently. In the afternoon I meet her, Russian artillery lands on a nearby hill. But she pays little attention as she angered around the grave and whispering sweets nothing on a dead son.

“How can you lose where you were born, where you grew up, where did your child grew, where did he find his last vacation?” She tells me through tears. “And then you live all your life with the feeling that you will never visit this place again – I can’t even imagine it right now.”

But her husband Oleh, 55, admits that they will have to leave when the fights are approaching. “I will not stay here, the Russians would set me a goal,” he says. Until then, they will remain under the night terror of the drones so that they can stay close to the last place to rest their son.

The challenges of life do not stop when the war arrives. All that Olha Zaithets wants is time to recover from his cancer surgery. Instead, the 53-year-old and her husband, Olexander Ponomarenko, 59, had to escape from their home to Olexandriva. The Russians were only 7.5 km and the firing became intense. Their postage women were killed in a Russian bombing and the school principal also.

“There was a blow -a rocket struck the neighboring house. And the explosive wave broke our roof tiles, blown the doors, windows, gates, fence. We just left and two days later it struck. If we were there, we would die,” she explains.

Now they live temporarily, in a loan house in Sviatochirsk. It’s not much better. We can hear firing outside, the previous line is closer to each day. But it will have to do it. They have nowhere to go.

“Yes, we’ll have to move somewhere further, but we don’t know how or where,” she says in a room crowded with their belongings, is still waiting to be unpacked. Saving their lives has gone to her hospital accounts and now they are unlikely.

On Tuesday, they left the city to collect the results of Olha’s tests. The news was good and you won’t have to undergo chemotherapy. “We were happy, we had the feeling that we were flying wings,” she said.

But while they were gone, Russia is bombing the nearby town of Yarova, 4 km. Just before 11 o’clock in the morning, the elderly left their homes and gathered to raise their pensions. About 24 were killed and 19 wounded in one of the most deadly civilian strikes in the war so far.

On Telegram, the leader of the Donetsk administration, Vadym Filashkin, determined the attack. “This is not a war – it’s pure terrorism.”

“I urge everyone,” he said, “Take care of yourself. Evacuny in more favorable regions of Ukraine!”

Additional Reporting from Libov Sholco