Evacuating the last remaining residents of Vovchansk, the town at the centre of Russia's recent offensive in Kharkiv region, becomes more dangerous with every passing day.
As fierce street battles between Russian and Ukrainian forces continue in the northern part of the town, local police and volunteers have been journeying in daily to evacuate the last, terrified residents out of a place that was once home to 18,000 people.
"We don't know how many people are left now, but we hope it's not more than 200," said Oleksiy Kharkivskyi, head of the Vovchansk police force, speaking last Friday morning in a nearby village.
The road into Vovchansk was under artillery fire at that very moment, he said. Dressed in military-style fatigues and with a pistol tucked into his body armour, Kharkivskyi's years of experience as a beat cop can hardly have prepared him for these rescue missions that require dodging drones and artillery fire.
The people who emerged from Vovchansk and the surrounding villages last Friday were mostly those who had planned to stick it out to the very end in their homes, but changed their mind when the intensity of the fighting became too much to bear.
Most of them were elderly, frail and deeply traumatised. They registered their identities with police and waited for a minibus that would take them to a hub for displaced people in Kharkiv.
Denne historien er fra May 24, 2024-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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