‘I am not leaving this house to go to live in some tent'

As conscription papers arrive in Donetsk, people along the border have been told to leave – but not everyone wants to go

- Andrew Roth AVILO-USPENKA and Pjotr Sauer MOSCOW

The first stop for Ella Fyodorova after she fled her home in eastern Ukraine was a windblown tent camp just across the Russian border, part of a mass evacuation effort that observers feared was the pretext for Russia to launch a formal intervention in Ukraine. “I wanted to stay, but my husband came home, and said: ‘Get your things together, we’re going,’” she said as she wrestled her two-year-old son into a blue snowsuit to walk to the public toilets nearby.

The escalation in fighting had not touched her home city of Starobesheve, she said, but warnings from the Russian-backed separatist government of an imminent attack by Ukraine had driven many families to flee. Her husband, who dropped her at the border, had to turn back.

Now she sat in the dim light of a medical tent alongside other mothers holding their children, all waiting for the next bus to take them further into Russia. Many left carrying just the basics: clothing, medicine, some food. “I don’t know where we’re going,” she said. “I don’t know anything. ”

There is evidence suggesting the sudden evacuations of the Russian-controlled areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions were designed to set the stage for a formal Russian intervention. The leaders of the Russian proxy states in eastern Ukraine filmed announcements of the evacuations days before release, according to video metadata.