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KOSTIANTYNIVKA, Ukraine: For many residents of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, evacuation begins with one defining blast — the explosion that makes it impossible to stay. For 69-year-old Tetiana Zaichikova, it came when a strike reduced her home to rubble.
The region has been the epicenter of heavy fighting for years and evacuations there have continued as long as Russia’s invasion — 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 percent of the area.
Some are staying in shattered cities, clinging to the hope that the war will end any day — a hope fueled by ongoing peace efforts, largely led by US 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.
“We 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,” said Zaichikova, who still bears bruises and hematomas across her face.
Defining moment to flee
If Zaichikova had taken even one step into the kitchen that night, she is convinced she would not have survived.
In Kostiantynivka — a city that once had a population of approximately 67,000 — 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.
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.
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.
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.
Emergency services no longer operated in the city, too dangerous even for soldiers. “If we had been burning, we would have just burned,” she said.
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.
A few days later, she left the city.
“I didn’t 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,” she said.
Last call
Police Officer Yevhen Mosiichuk has driven into Kostiantynivka almost every day for the past year to evacuate people. He has watched the situation deteriorate.
The city now sits on Ukraine’s shrinking patch of territory, wedged just west of Russian-held Bakhmut and nearly encircled from three sides by Moscow’s forces.
“The difficulty of evacuations is that the city is under constant attack,” he said, listing not only drones but artillery, rockets and glide bombs.
As he spoke, a drone detector beeped. “Oh, it caught drones,” he said.
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.
“The situation has been worsening — not every day, week or month, but every minute,” Mosiichuk said. “It is clear because they are using all kinds of weapons.”
For civilians, that means their city may soon be wiped off the map, like other once-large cities in the Donetsk region — Avdiivka and Bakhmut, now ghost towns stripped of their industrial and historic past.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Leaving it all behind
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.
Together with his wife, Larysa Naumenko, he packed what little they had. Naumenko had lived in the apartment since before the Soviet Union collapsed.
They handed the keys to one of the two neighbors left in the building and left under the thunder of shelling.
“We hoped … we lived here for 40 years. Do you think it’s easy to leave all this behind? At our age, we are left with nothing,” Naumenko said.
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’s disability but also their small pensions, which made it nearly impossible to start from scratch elsewhere.
“Hardly anyone will come back here. It feels like the city is being wiped off the face of the earth,” Naumenko said as she was driven away by the evacuation car. “Who will rebuild all this? It was such a developed city, with so many factories. Now they are gone.”