10:19 am: Eastern Ukraine is emptying
While waiting for the Russian steamroller, the Donbass under Ukrainian control is emptying of its population. Women, children, the elderly… There were hundreds of them this weekend waiting for their train at Kramatorsk’s pretty little station, with its pediment freshly painted red and white.
“It’s been like that since this weekend, with nearly 2,000 people a day embarking for the west, to Lviv or elsewhere,” says Nasir, a humanitarian volunteer who came to help with the operation. “It was two trains a day normally, but now there are four.”
Since Russia announced that it wanted to “concentrate its efforts on the liberation of Donbass”, this eastern region, Ukraine’s historic mining basin, has been living in fear of a major Russian offensive.
