A dispatch from Ukraine’s Pokrovsk: Heartbreak at the station

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.

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.