{"id":52367,"date":"2025-09-10T02:05:53","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T06:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/world\/civilians-in-ukraines-eastern-strongholds-struggle-as-russia-advances\/10\/09\/2025\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T02:05:53","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T06:05:53","slug":"civilians-in-ukraines-eastern-strongholds-struggle-as-russia-advances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newssprinters.com\/index.php\/world\/civilians-in-ukraines-eastern-strongholds-struggle-as-russia-advances\/10\/09\/2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Civilians in Ukraine’s eastern strongholds struggle as Russia advances"},"content":{"rendered":"

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DONETSK REGION, Ukraine (AP) \u2014 With the Russian advance deeper into the Donetsk region, the air in Ukraine\u2019s last strongholds<\/a> is thick with dread and the future for civilians who remain grows ever more uncertain.<\/p>\n

In Kostiantynivka, once home to 67,000 people, there is no steady supply of power, water or gas. Shelling intensifies, drones fill the skies and the city has become unbearable, driving out the last remaining civilians.<\/p>\n

Kramatorsk, by contrast, still shows signs of life. Just 25 kilometers (15 miles) to the north, the prewar population of 147,000 has thinned, but restaurants and cafes remain open. The streets are mostly intact. Though the city has endured multiple strikes and is now dominated by the military, daily routines persist in ways that are no longer possible in nearby towns.<\/p>\n

Once the industrial heart of Ukraine, Donetsk is being steadily reduced to rubble. Many residents fear its cities may never be rebuilt and, if the war drags on, Russia eventually will swallow what is left.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Donetsk) region has been trampled, torn apart, turned into dust,\u201d said Natalia Ivanova, a woman in her 70s who fled Kostiantynivka in early September after a missile struck near her home. Russian President Vladimir Putin \u201cwill go all the way … I\u2019m sure of it. I have no doubt more cities will be destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despair and destruction<\/p>\n

Kostiantynivka now sits on a shrinking patch of Ukrainian-held territory, wedged just west of Russian-occupied Bakhmut and nearly encircled on three sides by Moscow\u2019s forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey was always shooting,\u201d Ivanova said. \u201cYou\u2019d be standing there \u2026 and all you\u2019d hear was the whistle of shells.\u201d<\/p>\n

She had two apartments. One was destroyed and the other one damaged. For months, she watched buildings disappear in an instant, while swarms of buzzing drones \u201clike beetles\u201d filled the sky, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never thought I\u2019d leave,\u201d she added. \u201cI was a stolid soldier, holding on. I\u2019m a pensioner and it (the home) was my comfort zone.\u201d<\/p>\n

For years now, Ivanova had watched the region\u2019s cities fall: Bakhmut, then Avdiivka, and others. But the war, she said, still felt far away, even as it closed in on her doorstep.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt for those people,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it wasn\u2019t enough to make me leave.”<\/p>\n

A blast near her building finally forced her out. The explosion bent her windows so badly she couldn\u2019t shut them before fleeing. Her apartment remained wide open. She left her whole life behind in Kostiantynivka, the city where she was born.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease, stop it,\u201d she pleaded, directing her appeal to world leaders as she sat in an evacuation hub shortly after fleeing. \u201cIt\u2019s the poorest people who suffer the most. This war is senseless and stupid. We\u2019re dying like animals \u2014 by the dozens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Living through it together<\/p>\n

Olena Voronkova decided to leave Kostiantynivka earlier, in May, when she could no longer run her two businesses: a beauty salon and a cafe.<\/p>\n

She and her family relocated to nearby Kramatorsk, which is so close yet, in many ways, far away, as she is no longer able to enter her hometown. It wasn\u2019t the first loss she had suffered since the war began. In 2023, a rocket strike from a multiple-launch system severely damaged their house.<\/p>\n

The move to Kramatorsk wasn\u2019t by choice, she added, but \u201cbecause the circumstances left us no other option.\u201d<\/p>\n

First came the mandatory evacuation orders. Then a curfew so strict they could only move around the city for four hours a day. Then came the floods of remote-controlled drones.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re used to life in Donetsk region. We feel good here. Kramatorsk is familiar. A lot of people from our city moved here \u2014 even local municipal workers,\u201d Voronkova said.<\/p>\n

Not long after arriving in Kramatorsk, she opened a cafe that is nearly identical to the one she left behind. She said the space just happened to look similar. It has high white walls and ornate mirrors she brought from her beauty salon, which is now in the combat zone.<\/p>\n

The cafe has since become a refuge for others who also fled Kostiantynivka.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first there was hope that maybe some homes would survive \u2014 that people might go back,\u201d she said. \u201cNow we see it\u2019s unlikely anyone has anything left. The city is turning into another Bakhmut, Toretsk or Avdiivka. Everything is being destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n

She described the mood as \u201cheavy\u201d because \u201cpeople are losing hope\u201d and it felt easier in Kramatorsk because everyone shared the same loss, which created a sense of connection and mutual support.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one really knows where to go next. Everyone sees that Russia isn\u2019t stopping. And that\u2019s where the hopelessness begins. No one has a direction anymore. The uncertainty is everywhere,” she said.<\/p>\n

Seizing the day<\/p>\n

War is slowly draining the life out of Kramatorsk, as if warning that it may be the next city to be reduced to rubble.<\/p>\n

Daria Horlova still remembers it as a bustling place where, at 9 p.m., life in the central square was just getting started. Now it\u2019s deserted at all hours and 9 p.m. is when a strict curfew begins. The city is regularly bombed thanks to its proximity to the front line about 21 kilometers (13 miles) east.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s still terrifying \u2014 when something\u2019s flying overhead or strikes nearby, especially when it hits the city,\u201d the 18-year-old said. \u201cYou want to cry, but there are no emotions left. No strength.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horlova studies remotely at a local university that relocated to another region and works as a nail artist. One day, she hopes to open her own salon. For now, she and her boyfriend are stuck in limbo, unsure of what to do next.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s terrifying that most of the Donetsk region is occupied \u2014 and that it was Russia who attacked,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s why it feels like everything could change at any moment. Just look at Kostiantynivka \u2014 not long ago, life there was normal. And now …\u201d<\/p>\n

To distract herself from the anxiety, and the difficult decision she might soon have to make to leave, Horlova tries to focus on what brings her joy in the moment.<\/p>\n

She already was evacuated from Kramatorsk once, earlier in the war, and doesn\u2019t want to repeat it.<\/p>\n

Instead of dwelling on what the future could hold, she asked her boyfriend, a tattoo artist, to ink a large tattoo of a goat skull on her right leg, something she has dreamed about for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think you just have to do things \u2014 and do them as soon as you can,\u201d she said. \u201cBeing here, I know this tattoo will be a memory of Kramatorsk, if I end up leaving.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Vasilisa Stepanenko and Yehor Konovalov contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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DONETSK REGION, Ukraine (AP) — With the Russian advance deeper into the Donetsk region, the air in Ukraine’s last strongholds is thick