Pokrovsk, Eastern Ukraine (CNN) – The empty boxes are piling up on the floor as Halyna goes through her medical kit, taking out packs of pills and discarding any unnecessary packaging. She can’t afford to waste space. She’s running away and the journey ahead is long and risky.
Halyna, 59, and her husband Olexey, 61, are from Selydove, a town just south of Pokrovsk that’s near the current epicenter of the war in eastern Ukraine. They delayed leaving for as long as they could, staying even after all their friends were gone, hoping things would take a turn for the better.
But a few days ago, everything changed.
“The bombing was everywhere around us, all night. Our house is still intact, but it won’t be for long. Everything else has been damaged,” Halyna told CNN. “Our soldiers came and took us away,” she added.
A nurse and a miner, the couple are among tens of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing Pokrovsk and the surrounding towns as it becomes more and more likely that the city could become the next key battleground of the war in Ukraine.
Russian forces have been inching toward the city for weeks, but the situation has become critical in recent days. Moscow has been pushing hard to capture Pokrovsk even as it struggles to contain the Ukrainian incursion in the Kursk border region.
Pokrovsk is a strategic target for Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear that his goal is to seize all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Pokrovsk sits on a key supply road that connects it with other military hubs, and forms the backbone of Ukrainian defenses in the part of Donetsk region that is still under Kyiv’s control.
The front line is now so close that the fighting is audible in the city center. The unmistakable deep thuds of explosions can be heard coming from the suburbs. Every now and then, there’s the whizz of Ukrainian counter strikes, fired from farther inland, going over the city trying to strike Russian positions to the east.
Serhiy Dobryak, the head of Pokrovsk’s military-civilian administration, has been working non-stop in recent days, desperately trying to convince people to evacuate before it becomes too dangerous or even impossible to do so.
“Most people leave voluntarily, some we have to persuade. We started mandatory evacuation for families with kids this week,” he said, adding that about 1,000 people are leaving every day.
But fleeing isn’t easy – even for people who can afford it.
Arina, 31, desperately wants to leave Pokrovsk. She and her husband worked as dentists in Selydove, which is now too dangerous to go to.
They are struggling to find a place to live. The problem seems to be their son David, a toddler.
“We started packing a week before they declared the mandatory evacuation (and) we are looking for an apartment, but nobody wants to let an apartment to people with kids, to refugees,” she told CNN.