KOSTIANTYNIVKA, Ukraine (AP) \u2014 For many residents of Ukraine\u2019s eastern Donetsk region, evacuation begins with one defining blast \u2014 the explosion that makes it impossible to stay. For 69-year-old Tetiana Zaichikova, it came when a strike reduced her home to rubble.<\/p>\n
The region has been the epicenter of heavy fighting for years and evacuations there have continued as long as Russia\u2019s invasion \u2014 more than three years. Town after town in the region, larger than Slovenia or roughly the size of Massachusetts, is emptying amid the fighting as Russian forces now control around 70% of the area.<\/p>\n
Some are staying in shattered cities, clinging to the hope that the war will end any day \u2014 a hope fueled by ongoing peace efforts, largely led by U.S. President Donald Trump, that so far yielded no breakthroughs. They hold on until it becomes too dangerous even for the military and police to drive into the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe kept hoping. We waited for every round of negotiations. We thought somehow they would reach an agreement in our favor, and we could stay in our homes,\u201d said Zaichikova, who still bears bruises and hematomas across her face.<\/p>\n
Defining moment to flee<\/p>\n
If Zaichikova had taken even one step into the kitchen that night, she is convinced she would not have survived.<\/p>\n
In Kostiantynivka \u2014 a city that once had a population of approximately 67,000 \u2014 conditions in recent months have become apocalyptic: There is no reliable electricity, water or gas, and nightly barrages grow heavier with each passing hour. Russian forces fire all types of weapons while Ukrainian troops answer back, and the former industrial hub has become a proving ground crowded with drones overhead.<\/p>\n
Zaichikova knew the city was barely livable, but she clung to the hope she would not lose the place where she had lived all her life and taught music at a kindergarten.<\/p>\n
On the night of Aug. 28, after months of rarely leaving her home, she wanted only to make tea before bed. She switched on a night lamp and walked toward the kitchen. As she reached for the light switch, the blast hit.<\/p>\n
A wooden beam and shelves collapsed on her. When she came to, the rubble rose as high as she stood. The entrance to her building was blocked.<\/p>\n
Emergency services no longer operated in the city, too dangerous even for soldiers. \u201cIf we had been burning, we would have just burned,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Her neighbor swung a sledgehammer through the night until midday, finally breaking a hole for her to crawl through. Outside, she saw what she believed was the crater of a glide bomb.<\/p>\n
A few days later, she left the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to leave until the last moment, but that was the last straw. When I was driven through the city, I saw what it had become. It was black and destroyed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Last call<\/p>\n
Police Officer Yevhen Mosiichuk has driven into Kostiantynivka almost every day for the past year to evacuate people. He has watched the situation deteriorate.<\/p>\n
The city now sits on Ukraine\u2019s shrinking patch of territory, wedged just west of Russian-held Bakhmut and nearly encircled from three sides by Moscow\u2019s forces.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe difficulty of evacuations is that the city is under constant attack,\u201d he said, listing not only drones but artillery, rockets and glide bombs.<\/p>\n
As he spoke, a drone detector beeped. \u201cOh, it caught drones,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
They drove across the river, one flying over it and then toward the bridge, before jamming it with their equipment. Their van is fitted with anti-drone netting, and they pass through mesh corridors that Ukrainians installed to force drones to detonate prematurely or malfunction.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe situation has been worsening \u2014 not every day, week or month, but every minute,\u201d Mosiichuk said. \u201cIt is clear because they are using all kinds of weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n
For civilians, that means their city may soon be wiped off the map, like other once-large cities in the Donetsk region \u2014 Avdiivka and Bakhmut, now ghost towns stripped of their industrial and historic past.<\/p>\n
Like Zaichikova, those still in the city are mostly elderly, often disabled and poor. For them, losing their homes means setting out into the unknown without any support. Some evacuees said dying at home would be easier than leaving.<\/p>\n
Wearing a helmet and body armor, Mosiichuk approached the apartment building of those who had requested evacuation. Explosions rumbled at varying distances. He and his colleague worked quickly, knowing every minute in the city was life-threatening.<\/p>\n
The entrance was littered with shattered glass, and every floor had broken windows. Faded notices on the walls advertised electricians and plumbers who would never come.<\/p>\n
They climbed to the seventh floor. A few residents peeked out after hearing the commotion. Police shouted at them to leave as soon as possible, warning that it would soon be impossible to enter the city.<\/p>\n
Leaving it all behind<\/p>\n
When police came to evacuate 67-year-old Mykhailo Maistruk, it was the first time in two years he had set foot outside. With an amputated leg, he had been trapped in his apartment since the elevator stopped working and the city became too dangerous.<\/p>\n
Together with his wife, Larysa Naumenko, he packed what little they had. Naumenko had lived in the apartment since before the Soviet Union collapsed.<\/p>\n
They handed the keys to one of the two neighbors left in the building and left under the thunder of shelling.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hoped \u2026 we lived here for 40 years. Do you think it\u2019s easy to leave all this behind? At our age, we are left with nothing,\u201d Naumenko said.<\/p>\n
Maistruk said even they could no longer endure the endless explosions and finally decided to leave. Many of their neighbors and friends had fled in the first months of the invasion; some later returned and left again. What kept them in place was not only Maistruk\u2019s disability but also their small pensions, which made it nearly impossible to start from scratch elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cHardly anyone will come back here. It feels like the city is being wiped off the face of the earth,\u201d Naumenko said as she was driven away by the evacuation car. \u201cWho will rebuild all this? It was such a developed city, with so many factories. Now they are gone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KOSTIANTYNIVKA, Ukraine (AP) \u2014 For many residents of Ukraine\u2019s eastern Donetsk region, evacuation begins with one defining blast…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[32,2000,299,63917,4179,137607,332,7661,12022,657,7660,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-398765","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-evacuations","12":"tag-general-news","13":"tag-mykhailo-maistruk","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","16":"tag-soviet-union","17":"tag-ukraine","18":"tag-war-and-unrest","19":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115149216404277727","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}