By Volodymyr Pavlov and Vitalii Hnidyi
KUPIANSK, Ukraine (Reuters) – Yuliia Baibak could not withstand another Russian airstrike on her neighborhood before evacuating her parents from the besieged Ukrainian city of Kupiansk.
“I came (to my parents) all white, crying and scared, and I told them, ‘Either we leave or they will kill us all here,'” she said Thursday while helping her wheelchair-bound mother into a car.
Baibak and his parents were among thousands of people scheduled for a mandatory evacuation this week from Kupiansk and several surrounding settlements as Russian forces attacked the strategic center in northeastern Ukraine.
kyiv’s troops recaptured Kupiansk six months after its capture by Russia in its February 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 Donetsk industrial region to threaten other key transit hubs that supply much of Ukraine’s eastern forces.
Residents of Kupiansk interviewed by Reuters reported sleepless nights under regular Russian fire across the area, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
In some parts, Moscow’s troops are just 4 kilometers from the city limits, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Ukrainian television this week.
He said he ordered the evacuation because constant Russian bombing had made 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 about 4,000 people.
Hanna Zorina, 90, who was evacuating Kupiansk for the second time after returning last spring, said the situation seemed bearable at first.
“Then things got to the point where, ‘That’s it, the end.'”