By Volodymyr Pavlov and Vitalii Hnidyi
KUPIANSK, Ukraine (Reuters) – Yuliia Baibak could not bear another Russian air strike on her neighbourhood before evacuating her parents from the besieged Ukrainian city of Kupiansk.
“I came (to my parents) all white, crying and scared, and said, ‘Either we leave or they’ll kill us all here,'” she said on Thursday while helping her wheelchair-bound mother to a car.
Baibak and her parents were among the thousands slated for mandatory evacuation this week from Kupiansk and several surrounding settlements as Russian forces bore down on the strategic hub in northeastern Ukraine.
Kyiv’s troops reclaimed Kupiansk six months after its capture by Russia in its Feburary 2022 invasion, but it has come under increasing attack as Moscow steps up an offensive along the sprawling eastern front.
Further south, Kremlin troops are advancing village-by-village in the industrial Donetsk region to threaten other key transit hubs that supply much of Ukraine’s eastern forces.
Kupiansk residents interviewed by Reuters reported sleepless nights under regular Russian fire across the area, some 100 kilometres (62 miles) east of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
In some parts, Moscow’s troops are as close as 4 kilometres from the city limits, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Ukrainian television this week.
He said he ordered the evacuation because constant Russian shelling had rendered repairs to local electricity, heat and water too difficult.
Speaking to reporters in Kharkiv on Thursday, Syniehubov said the priority was to evacuate the entire civilian population from the left bank of the Oskil River, or around 4,000 people.
Ninety-year-old Hanna Zorina, who was evacuating Kupiansk for the second time after returning last spring, said the situation had seemed liveable at first.
“Then things got to the point that, ‘That’s it – the end.'”