Inside Donetsk as residents flee attacks on Ukrainian region Putin wants to control

The Donetsk region of East Ukraine has long been in the landscapes of Moscow. Vladimir Putin reportedly wanted to freeze the war full control.

Russia already controls 70% of Donetsk and almost all neighbor Luhansk and makes slow but stable progress.

I go to Donetsk town Dobropillia with two human volunteers, only 8km (five miles), one of the positions of Russia. They serve to bring patients, the elderly and children to a safer place.

At first, it goes like a clock. 130km/s (80Mph) The roof that hit the roof drone jerky equipment equipped with an armored car in the town. The road is covered with long green networks that conceal visibility from above – protecting it from Russian drones.

The second journey of this morning and the streets are mostly empty. The remaining few people leave their homes quickly to gather quickly. Russian attacks come every day.

The town seems to be abandoned and thirsty for a week. Every building was damaged, some were reduced to ruins.

In the last five days, 19 -year -old Ukrainian Varia, a 31 -year -old German and Universal Aid Ukraine, made dozens of trips to evacuate people.

A week ago, small Russian troops groups are afraid that some of the most intense defended parts of the Ukrainian front – Ukraine’s “castle belt” may collapse.

Extra troops ran to the region and said that the Ukrainian officials were stable. But most of Dobropillia residents think it’s time to go.

As the evacuation team arrives, 56 -year -old Vitalii KaliniChenko is waiting at the door of the apartment block with a plastic bag full of items at hand.

“My windows were torn apart, look, they all flew on the second floor. The only person is left,” he says.

He wears a gray T -shirt and black shorts and his right leg is bandage. Mr. KaliniChenko points to a cratere beyond some rose bushes where a shahed drone fell a few nights ago, shredded his windows and cuts his leg. Another drone lies in a neighbor’s garden.

As we are about to leave, Laarz finds a drone hill and we cover it again under the trees. Fifty drone detector shows more than one Russian plane in the area.

An old woman in summer dress and wicker hat walks with a shopping car. He warns him about the drone and accelerates his speed. He is nearly a burst, his voice echoed the nearby apartment blocks.

But before trying to leave, there is still another family to save in the corner.

Laarz goes on foot to find them, closes the drone -shaking equipment of the idle vehicle to save the battery power. “If you hear a drone, two switches in the middle console, open,” he says, as you disappear in the corner. Jammer is only effective against some Russian drones.

A series of explosions hit the neighborhood. A woman to get water with her dog runs for a cover.

Laarz returns with more evacuation and still goes out of the city with drones in the air above.

I live in the evacuation convoy next to Anton, his 31st mother is behind. He cried when he left and hopes he would leave too early.

In the war, the front lines shifts, towns disappear and won and disappear, but the fate of the region hanging in Russia progresses and negotiations can see these Anton and other evacuation houses.

Anton says he has never left the town before. On the roar of the engine, I ask whether Ukraine will leave Donbas, the rich in source of the source of Donetsk and Luhansk.

“We have to sit on the negotiation table and ultimately we need to solve this conflict peacefully.

But 19 -year -old Varia feels different. “We can never trust Putin or Russia, whatever they say, and we have experience in this regard.

As Russia progresses slowly but stable, the situation in Donbas is increasingly dangerous for Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky put suggestions that it could be lost by the end of this year, and estimated that Russia’s occupation of the rest of the rest would last for four more years.

However, it is unlikely that Ukraine will recapture an important area here without new weapons or additional support from the West.

This part of Donetsk is critical for the defense of Ukraine. If it disappears or given to Russia, the neighboring Kharkiv and Zaporizhia regions – and beyond – will be at greater risk.

The cost of keeping is measured in the lives and body parts of Ukrainian troops.

Then I go to a nearby field hospital under the cover of the darkness. Drone activity never stops, and the war is injured and the dead can only be taken safely at night.

Russian losses are much higher, perhaps three times more or more, but it has a larger capacity than Ukraine to absorb losses.

The wounded begin to come, as the cases extend until the morning hours, it grows more seriously. The wounded from fighting in Pokrovsk, which is now a partially surrounded city, where Russia has been trying to seize for a year. Donetsk’s defense is a key city and the fight is ruthless.

The first man was conscious, a bullet was injured from a fire department to his chest. Then another man comes with shrapnel wounds in his forties. He took two days and three initiatives to save him, which was the intensity of the war. Later, a man who flies up with a drone strike on the road to my right leg almost entirely from Pokrovsk to Myrnohrad.

42 -year -old surgeon and SNR LT Dima passes from the patient to the patient. This is a medical stabilization unit, so it is to patch the wounded as quickly as possible and send it to a main hospital for more treatment. “It’s hard because I know I can do more, but I don’t have time, or he says.

After all this massacre, I ask him if Donbas will be delivered to bring peace.

“We should stop [the war]But we don’t want to stop it like this, “he says.

Tired, wounded were heavier, dozens of day, since Russia’s attack, and injuries, mostly the worst thing doctors have seen since the war began because of the drones.

“Only this nightmare, this blood, we want to go home to live in peace without this death, or he says.

In the afternoon, between the corn and sunflower fields, the newly unrealized thorny wire shone in the sunlight. Raising red soil banks, deep trenches and tank anti-ejderhan’s tooth concrete pyramids run with the smooth lines. They were all designed to slow down the sudden Russian progress.

Russia is believed to have more than 100,000 soldiers waiting to benefit from another opportunity, such as previous violations around Dobropillia.

These new fortifications are worsening in Donetsk in Ukrainian dirt schedule. The rest of the region can be delivered by diplomacy, but until then, bloody and exhausted ukraine intends to fight for every inches.