The frontline in Ukraine’s Donetsk region has been creeping towards Dobropillia for the past 18 months. Located not far from the hotspot of Pokrovsk, this coal mining town has served as a refuge for thousands of displaced people throughout the full-scale war. But in recent weeks, even they have begun to flee. The exodus began after Russia struck the town’s main shopping center with a half-ton bomb on July 16, killing two people and wounding 28 others. When Meduza visited Dobropillia in early August, the remaining residents compared it to a ghost town — and that was before Russian troops pierced Ukraine’s defenses in the area. With Vladimir Putin seemingly intent on seizing all of the Donetsk region and U.S. diplomatic efforts yielding few results, many locals felt the dire situation on the ground left them no choice but to leave, even if they weren’t sure how to get out or where they would go.

Dobropillia sat all but empty on a weekday in early August, save for a few civilians and stray dogs wandering the streets. The town’s apartment blocks had most of their windows boarded up, in an attempt to protect their inhabitants from flying glass (or preserve the panes themselves) during Russian attacks. Out on the street, shards littered the ground.

The town comes under attack daily, residents said; sometimes, Moscow’s drones fly overhead every 30 minutes. The sound of frequent explosions could be heard in the distance. But until recently, Dobropillia’s residents paid them little heed. After three and a half years of all-out war with Russia, the roar of missiles and buzz of drones had become the norm. Locals carried on with their days as best they could, sitting with neighbors on park benches outside their apartment buildings, buying groceries at the town’s remaining stores, or going for walks with their friends.

Then, in mid-July, a deadly strike on the town’s center proved to be the last straw for many. On July 24, regional authorities ordered families with children to evacuate, and Dobropillia’s inhabitants began fleeing en masse.

Weeks later, a heaviness hung in the air as the few remaining residents planned their own escapes, knowing that these might be their last days at home. With Russian troops pushing towards Dobropillia and aerial attacks growing heavier and more frequent with each passing day, they would soon have no choice but to leave everything behind to save themselves and their families.

‘It’s just misery’

A small coal mining town with a pre-war population of around 28,000, Dobropillia now finds itself less than a dozen kilometers from Russian positions in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. Many of those who remain there are elderly, disabled, or internally displaced people who had already fled from some of the epicenters of the war, like the besieged and now occupied cities of Avdiivka and Bakhmut, and saw Dobropillia as a haven. However, since nearby Pokrovsk became a hotspot of the war over a year ago, Dobropillia has grown increasingly dangerous.

President Vladimir Putin remains adamant that Russia’s military seize the entire Donetsk region, more than 70 percent of which is already under its control. When Meduza visited Dobropillia in early August, U.S. President Donald Trump had just allowed his own ceasefire deadline to lapse without imposing additional sanctions on Russia. Trump’s subsequent meeting with Putin in Alaska also failed to produce results.

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Meanwhile, in Dobropillia, residents said they feared their homes would soon be wiped off the map. And while the need to evacuate was obvious, many said they had no idea where to go. “We’re planning [to leave], we’re looking for a place to stay,” said Tetyana, as she pushed her weeks-old granddaughter down the street in a stroller. “There’s already a mandatory evacuation order, officially, but they haven’t come for us yet,” she continued. “Maybe we’ll get help from some volunteers. We can’t do it on our own anymore.”

Russia has conducted some of its deadliest attacks of the war over the last few months, launching thousands of drones and missiles, and targeting areas far from the front lines, like the Lviv and Zakarpattia regions in the country’s west. The number of civilian casualties recorded in Ukraine reached a three-year high in July, with 286 civilians killed and 1,388 injured, according to the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.

Russian drone attacks also hit a record high in July, with 6,129 long-range drones fired at Ukraine, a 13 percent increase from June, according to data from the Ukrainian Air Force cited by the Kyiv Independent. But in Dobropillia, attacks have been deadly and constant for months.

On March 7, Russia launched a missile attack on the town that killed 11 people and injured at least 50 others, including seven children, according to regional officials. Still, many of Dobropillia’s residents stayed — only to witness another major attack on July 16, when Russia dropped a half-ton aerial bomb on the main market and the Aurora shopping center, killing two people and injuring 28.

Ivan, 58, said that he was driving his car nearby when he heard the attack, and ducked behind the steering wheel to shield himself from the explosion. When he looked back up, he saw the market ablaze. Ivan knew then that he and his wife, who is disabled, would soon have to leave. And he wasn’t alone in that realization.

In the aftermath of the attack, Dobropillia became a ghost town seemingly overnight, residents told Meduza. Those who could afford to leave did so en masse, and rescue workers evacuated some 1,250 people. In just two weeks, the majority of the town’s restaurants and stores closed, including all the local pharmacies, and even the hospital decided to evacuate its staff.

“There are [no doctors] here, that’s why we want to leave. The baby’s so small, we have to,” Tetyana told Meduza.

“For ordinary people like us, it’s just misery. So now, I’m about to leave with my wife. She packed herself a bag full of medicine. And, well, we’re heading out,” Ivan said with a sigh. “My wife hasn’t slept for three nights. She’s afraid of everything.”

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As he spoke, Ivan was boarding up the windows of an apartment belonging to his sister, who had already left town. “In case we come back,” he explained. “If you don’t seal it up, it’ll get damp and ruined.”

Just days before, a KAB bomb had struck the neighborhood, leaving a crater in one of Dobropillia’s main roads and shattering the windows of nearby residential blocks. Glass and debris still littered the inside of the building and the street outside.

Ivan, who suffers from hearing loss, said it had been “very noisy” in Dobropillia lately, with the town coming under attack every day. “I lost my hearing in the mine, I worked there for 35 years,” he told Meduza, as four loud booms sounded nearby. “I spent my whole life building, working hard — I almost finished a two-story house,” Ivan lamented. “It’s all going to be lost.”

‘You leave it all behind and move on’

Olga, 40, was working at a fruit stand near the shopping center when it came under attack on July 16. “Everything just blew off — even things that were nailed down were ripped away,” she said, recalling the force of the explosion. “We weren’t directly hit, but the blast wave slammed us.”

“The day after the strike, everyone left,” Olga continued. “The whole market was gone, and I was the only one left.”

Olga moved to Dobropillia from Pokrovsk, a city roughly 30 kilometers (18 miles) away that Russian troops have been trying to encircle for months. She believed that most of Dobropillia’s remaining residents were displaced people from nearby towns, like her. “We’re still hanging in there, because nothing as scary as Pokrovsk has happened yet,” she explained.

Having lived in Donbas since the war began in 2014, Olga said that locals had long grown used to shelling. But even she found the latest attacks on Dobropillia intense. “We’re not used to this — it’s frightening,” she told Meduza. “But what can you do? I think that’s just life. We get used to it and just keep living.”

Olga was considering leaving town, but didn’t have a concrete plan. “If things keep going downhill, then I’ll move again — for the fourth time. All I take with me is a small bag, four cats, and a dog. I can’t take anything else,” she said. “Another new house; new forks, new spoons, and buying everything all over again. And then you leave it all behind and move on.”

Residents of Dobropillia had hoped that if the war did not end soon, at least the front lines would not reach their home. But on August 11, news broke that Russia had pierced Ukraine’s defensive lines in the area. The next day, Zelensky confirmed that groups of Russian troops had advanced about 10 kilometers (six miles) in several locations.

Ukraine’s General Staff stated that its forces were engaging “in heavy defensive fighting against superior enemy forces” and “taking effective measures” to halt Russia’s advances in the Donetsk region. According to the same statement, Russia had concentrated more than 110,000 troops in the Pokrovsk sector alone. However, Ukrainian officials also emphasized that the small troop clusters that had infiltrated their defenses near Dobropillia had not taken control of the territory.

Russia’s advances have since slowed — as have the Trump administration’s efforts to bring Putin to the negotiating table. Just days after the Alaska summit, on August 18, Zelensky and other European leaders met with Trump in Washington to discuss future peace talks. During his Oval Office meeting with Zelensky, Trump raised the prospect of a trilateral summit with Putin, promising to “work with everybody” to achieve a long-term peace. “I don’t think you need a ceasefire,” he added. “I like the concept of a ceasefire for one reason, because you’d stop killing people immediately. But we can work a deal where we’re working on a peace deal while they’re fighting.”

After putting in a phone call to Putin, Trump announced that he was in the process of arranging direct peace talks between Zelensky and the Russian leader. On August 19, the White House said that plans for a bilateral summit between Putin and Zelensky were “underway,” and Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff claimed that Putin had already agreed to concessions.

But in the days that followed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Putin had only agreed to think about “raising the level” of peace talks with Ukraine, and that Russia would only agree to security guarantees for Ukraine that allow Moscow to veto any future efforts to defend Kyiv.

Ukraine has said repeatedly that it will not allow Russia to prevent other countries from defending it. “We need a just peace, a peace where our future will be decided only by us,” Zelensky said on August 24, Ukraine’s Independence Day. “Ukraine is not a victim,” he added, “it’s a fighter.”

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‘No one gives a damn about us’

It took Valerii ten days to get out of Dobropillia. Though he wanted to evacuate sooner, aid workers said they were unable to come and collect him. “They said it wasn’t possible — they weren’t coming here anymore,” he told Meduza.

According to Valerii, “everything was fine” in Dobropillia a year ago. “It all started gradually [getting worse] after they hit the Aurora,” he explained, recalling the July 16 attack on the shopping center. “Then people started leaving en masse, and the heavy shelling began.”

Eventually, Valerii managed to leave town on his own. He spoke to Meduza over the phone from Pavlohrad, a city in the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region, where he was staying with a friend. “I just grabbed what I needed from the apartment and that’s it. My apartment is basically gone, it’s unlivable,” Valerii said sullenly. “Two big rockets landed between the buildings, and a wall collapsed. My building is still standing, but it could fall at any moment and kill someone.”

Valerii recalled being within 100 meters of explosions from shelling “several times.” (“Lucky, I guess,” he said of surviving the attacks.) As he struggled to find a way to leave Dobropillia, he began to feel a sense of hopelessness. “If it weren’t for my friend, I don’t know where I’d be,” Valerii said.

Valerii told Meduza he was trying to find temporary housing in Pavlohrad. But with so many displaced people arriving in the city, there are no vacancies, he said. “I’m in a safe place, but I can’t find an apartment,” Valerii explained. “I have no idea what comes next. I just hope for the best each day.”

The situation in and around Dobropillia has only grown worse since Valerii left. According to Meduza’s military analysis, Ukraine has been unable to push back Russian forces near Dobropillia, despite concentrating major reserves in the area. On August 26, a Russian attack on a nearby mine killed one worker and injured three, and caused a power outage that left 148 miners trapped underground for hours. (Ukrainian lawmaker Mykhailo Volynets later reported that all the miners had been brought aboveground.)

That same day, Trump warned of an “economic war” if he cannot get Putin and Zelensky to end the war in Ukraine. “It will not be a world war, but it’ll be an economic war, and an economic war is going to be bad. It’s going to be bad for Russia, and I don’t want that,” Trump told his cabinet, according to Bloomberg. However, as of this writing, Trump has yet to impose additional sanctions on Russia — and Putin and Zelensky are not scheduled to meet.

“These Russian missiles and attack drones today are a clear response to everyone in the world who, for weeks and months, has been calling for a ceasefire and for real diplomacy,” Zelensky said following a major overnight attack that killed 23 people in Kyiv on August 28. “Russia chooses ballistics instead of the negotiating table.”

“I wish more attention was given to people,” Valerii told Meduza. “These days, everyone only worries about their own. But it would be nice if they paid attention to ordinary folks like us too. Because most of the time, no one gives a damn about us. That’s the truth.”

“I hope this all comes to an end, or that the situation will get a little calmer, at least,” he added. “I just want to go home — even if it’s to my destroyed house.”

Marie Jones, Dobropillia