Published: Less than 20 min ago
Zelenskyy has called on the residents of Donetsk to evacuate immediately.
In the middle of the war, Ukrainians return to their hometowns on the front lines.
– We still have to pay the rent, says one of the returnees.
U.S.-supplied precision missiles killed dozens of Russian soldiers and destroyed several railroad cars over the weekend, according to Ukrainian officials, reports The New York Times.
Russian forces have been shelling the Donetsk region for a long time, and many civilians living near the front line have been caught in the crossfire, according to CNN.
– There is not a single settlement that has not been hit by Russian artillery, says Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko in a televised interview
Ukrainian President Zelenskyi has called on the hundreds of thousands of people still remaining in Donetsk to evacuate, writes Reuters.
At the same time, civilians have begun to return to the front lines, well aware that they are risking their lives, as they have found it difficult to survive outside the region.
One of those who returned to her hometown is Anna Protsenko, 35. She was hit by a Russian rocket attack in the city of Pokrovsk. When the missile hit her, the body was flung against the fence so hard that it shattered, reports say AP.
Her mother found her dying on a bench under the same pear tree they had sat under that afternoon. When the father arrived at the scene, she was already dead.
A few days earlier, she had moved back for a job in her hometown of Pokrovsk, after trying to find work elsewhere for two months.
On Monday, she was buried by family and friends.
Tens of thousands of people, like Protsenko, have returned to rural villages and industrial towns near the front line. According to the mayor’s office in Pokrovsk, 70 percent of those evacuated have returned home.
Anastasia Rusanova, a neighbor of Protsenko, confirms that it is the lack of money that is pushing the Ukrainians to return.
– We cannot win. They won’t hire us anywhere else and we still have to pay rent. There is nowhere to go, but here in Donetsk everything is ours, she says.
Also in the city of Kramatorsk, an hour’s drive closer to the front line, officials have said the population dropped from 220,000 to about 50,000 in the first weeks of the war, but has now risen to 68,000.
Therefore, civilians return
Some of those who have returned describe that one of the reasons is that they felt unwelcome in other parts of Ukraine, as those from the Donetsk area are often Russian-speaking.
However, most have stated that it is the lack of money that has forced them back.
– Who will take care of us? wondered Karina Smulska, who returned to Pokrovsk a month after the evacuation. Now, at the age of 18, she is the family’s main breadwinner, as a waitress at a restaurant in the city.