The sounds of protracted artillery battles boom and echo over the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk with a nerve-wracking consistency. From morning until night, the Ukrainians and Russians fire endlessly upon one another from the suburbs. Billboards with a simple message, ‘Evacuate’, daubed in giant red lettering line most of the major routes through the city. A message blared unerringly over tannoys from police cars that crawl the streets continuously, and one more than half of the city’s 60,000 population have taken to heart.
Nobody knows when Pokrovsk will fall, but when it does its loss will be a crushing blow for Ukraine
In the centre of Pokrovsk, the hundreds of people gathered at the train station pay little heed to the pounding of encroaching shells, too preoccupied with seeing off relatives on the evacuation train that leaves once per day. Amassing on the platform, they put everything they have into observing these last sacred minutes together. Orthodox priests scurry up and down, helping the old and frail carry their luggage as paramedics and rail workers in heavy body armour lift an elderly woman from a stretcher up the steep steps onto the train. Some families huddle together, clutching at one another in a tight, desperate embrace while others disappear onto the train, waving, hands outstretched through any available gap in the carriage window. A young man runs the length of the platform, a child no older than two or three in arm as the noise of yet more artillery fades into the background, virtually ignored.
‘My children left two years ago, now I am going to join them,’ says an elderly woman in a tone that is deceptively matter of fact. ‘I am from Myrnohrad where they shoot day and night, so I have to leave’. There is a dignified restraint to proceedings, far from the scenes of panic and fear one might find with the Russians bearing down just six miles away.
These evacuations are a daily occurrence in Pokrovsk, a city that seems to be terminally frozen on the eve of invasion, emptying day by day. Once families have said their farewells, a stillness rolls over the platform as if blown in with the breeze on a hot summer day. Families gaze at each other, separated by less than an inch of steel and glass, unmoving, unwavering in their attempt to hold themselves together. Time itself seems to stall, the deep silence broken only when a whistle sounds and the wheels judder, almost imperceptibly at first, into motion. Some on the platform burst into tears, others chase the train along the platform as it gathers speed, waving and blowing kisses to those they know they may never see again. Half way along, one woman simply stands, rooted in place, signing the cross over and over before clasping her face in a futile attempt to stem the flow of tears.
The evacuation trains are expected to stop within a matter of days. Supermarkets have already shuttered their doors, and the banks and the national postal service have pulled out. Facebook and Telegram groups are filled with people trying to sell furniture and small-time shop owners attempting to offload commercial equipment as they prepare to flee. The city feels emptier by the day, the one highway leading to the neighbouring Dnipro region a steady stream of moving trucks and soviet era Ladas, roofs piled high with suitcases and white goods. The tiny office of the Ukrainian Red Cross, where just four out of more than a dozen volunteers are still working, is preparing to close and move to Dnipro. One of the volunteers has been prescribed anti-depressants by the local hospital, owing to the pressure of the situation. ‘I can’t say anything else,’ she says, ‘or else I am going to cry.’
The evacuation trains are expected to stop within a matter of days
It was only a matter of weeks ago that the city authorities put into place a mandatory evacuation order for families with children. Now, they implore everyone to leave. ‘Unfortunately, many of the civilians in Pokrovsk believe that we will not surrender the city,’ laments Sergey, a press officer for the 59th Brigade; his unit struggling to keep the advancing Russians at bay. ‘For every twenty or thirty artillery shells they are firing on us, we are sending maybe two or three back.’ It is a dire situation for an exhausted Ukrainian military and their already depleted resources.
With the fighting taking place just a few miles outside of Pokrovsk, the city remains surprisingly intact, so far escaping the kind of desolation seen in Bakhmut or Avdiivka. But all the signs are there that this state of affairs will not hold for long. In the early hours of Saturday morning, multiple anti-aircraft missiles are fired into a hotel just minutes from the train station, devastating an entire city block. By Monday night, the sounds of outgoing artillery fire are coming from inside the city, concerning evidence of the Ukrainian line being pushed further and further back.
Nobody knows when Pokrovsk will fall, but when it does its loss will be a crushing blow for Ukraine. A major logistics hub, the city is strategically vital to both sides, occupying a crucial intersection of railway lines and roads that feed other towns and cities along the Donetsk frontline. For Russia, it is in many ways the key to the rest of the Donbas. If it can deprive Ukraine of Pokrovsk, it seems increasingly likely the rest of the region will follow. However long Pokrovsk can hold out, with Russian artillery now turning on the city itself, time is running out for those who have yet to evacuate.
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