A highway sign reading “Have a Nice Trip” in English arches over the E-50 road leading east from Dnipro city in Ukraine towards the frontline.

The route passes through two military checkpoints before reaching Pavlohrad, a small city whose centre still hums with daily life.

But the Ukrainian mobile drone interceptor unit stationed at the city’s entrance is a reminder that the war is raging only 50km away.

A drone had been shot down just outside the city on Wednesday (1 April) during a visit by this reporter.

Pavlohrad is also host to a major evacuation hub for people fleeing villages along the rim of incremental Russian advances and Ukrainian counterattacks.

Last week alone, more than 600 people arrived at the centre, housed in a former school.

Its coordinator, Liliia Zemliana, says the location remains relatively safe for now.

“There is no settlement without rockets,” she noted, adding that the centre has assisted some 46,000 people over the past year.

On Wednesday, evacuees arrived from Kramatorsk and other towns still under Ukrainian control in Donetsk.

A day earlier, president Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had demanded Ukrainian forces withdraw from the remaining parts of Donetsk within two months.

Russia has occupied most of the Donbas since 2014, a large industrial region that spans Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.

Moscow’s demands

Moscow wants the entire industrial region and not only the areas controlled by their puppet regimes as part of a possible future peace plan.

But Yevheniy Makarov, a 65-year-old from Kramatorsk, remains defiant. “The Russians won’t occupy Kramatorsk,” he told EUobserver at the evacuation hub in Pavlohrad.

Makarov had fled the city earlier that day with his wife, leaving behind their son, who insisted they seek safety elsewhere. The city had been hit by drones five times during day with fires breaking out in an apartment building, according to local media.

“It has been hard, really hard to leave. We’ve spent our entire lives in the city. Everything we have worked for is there and now we have nothing,” he said.