Fresh Russian advances in eastern Ukraine send locals fleeing
Item
1 of 4 Volodymyr Arkhipov, who fled Russian advances towards his
hometown of Toretsk, sits in an evacuation train in Pokrovsk, Ukraine,
amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, July 31, 2024. REUTERS/Thomas Peter
[1/4]Volodymyr
Arkhipov, who fled Russian advances towards his hometown of Toretsk,
sits in an evacuation train in Pokrovsk, Ukraine, amid Russia's attack
on Ukraine, July 31, 2024. REUTERS/Thomas Peter Purchase Licensing Rights - Ukrainians evacuating from embattled town of Toretsk
- Russian forces have destroyed outskirts, ex-resident says
- Fighting forces locals to bury bodies near their homes
POKROVSK,
Ukraine, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Sitting in a spartan, third-class train
carriage about to leave Pokrovsk's railway station in eastern
Ukraine, Volodymyr Arkhipov reflected on the grinding Russian advances which this week forced him to flee his second home in two years.
"I
hauled out a corpse where (the Russians) bombed us, a woman of 37 ...
by the time we dug her up, she had suffocated," the 57-year-old told
Reuters, describing his final days in the embattled town of Toretsk
before being evacuated.
The
heavy Soviet-era train jolted into motion, taking him and his
84-year-old uncle, Mykola Arkhipov, towards western Ukraine from
Pokrovsk, where they had spent the night after arriving by bus from
embattled Toretsk, 30 miles to the east.
The
two men are part of a wave of people fleeing Russian advances on
several fronts in the eastern region of Donetsk, as Moscow batters
slowly through formerly solid Ukrainian defences.
Pressing
home their advantages in manpower and weapons, Russian forces have
fought their way towards major towns and supply routes in pursuit of
their goal of full control of Ukraine's industrialized and mineral-rich
Donbas.
One recent advance has allowed Russia to open a salient only 20 km (12 miles) from Pokrovsk,
an important logistical hub and still home to about 60,000 people.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday that Pokrovsk was now Russia's main target.
Moscow has claimed control of four villages east of Pokrovsk in the last week. Ukraine did not comment on those claims.
Russian
soldiers have reached the edge of Toretsk, where the regional governor
said a week ago that only 3,500 people were left, just over 10% of the
prewar population. More have since been evacuated by authorities and
humanitarian organisations.
"The
areas (on the outskirts) where they have entered have been levelled to
the ground," recalled Volodymyr Arkhipov, who had fled there with his
nephew from the eastern town of Rubizhne in April 2022, shortly before
the Russians captured it.
LUCKIER THAN OTHERS
With friends to stay with in western Ukraine, the two men are luckier than many others who know no-one there.
Mykola, a former coal miner, stared out of the window as the landscape of his once-proud mining region zoomed past him.
Volodymyr
glumly shared that he was originally from Russia and had moved to
Ukraine aged 30 - a common story in eastern Ukraine, where many Russians
migrated during the Soviet era to work in the region's factories and
coal mines.
The
Arkhipovs and others evacuated with them had looked dazed as they
arrived from Toretsk at the shelter in Pokrovsk on Tuesday, carrying the
few possessions they were able to take stuffed into suitcases and
supermarket bags.
They gave harrowing descriptions of civilian death and destruction caused by intense shelling.
"We thought that our house had been hit. But instead, in the house next door, the roof was swept away," Lidiia Poliakova said.
The
evacuees said the shelling was so intense that locals were no longer
able to reach the town's cemetery to bury the dead and had to find
patches of earth within the town instead.
Poliakova, 75, said she had to bury her daughter, who had succumbed to a long chronic illness, in this way.
"I found a (clear) spot and buried her under a tree," she said. "What else could I do?"
Additional reporting by Vitalii Hnidyi; editing by Tom Balmforth and Philippa Fletcher