The engine of the evacuation vehicle roars through the silent streets of Huliaipole, traveling along an avenue that until recently was the backbone of a vibrant city and now displays only collapsed facades and cars surrounded by dust and shrapnel. Around it, the rubble tells the story of a place where, before the explosion, nearly 15,000 people lived, and today barely 500 remain. It is the last frontier where civilian life resists the military advance in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine.
Her daily routine consists of gathering what fits into a couple of old bags, resignedly closing the door of the ruined house, and letting herself be guided, supported by a policeman's arm, toward an armored van. Thus departed Kateryna Ischenko, seventy-eight years old, with a hunched back and unwavering hope.
"They say the Russians are advancing through Uspenivka and nearby," he tells the officer."But nobody knows what that means. We only hear the gunfire. They're getting closer."
A few kilometers further on, the road bears the marks of the battle: destroyed vehicles lie overturned like dead animals, and a caged cat meows in bewilderment. Through the window, Ischenko clings to the conviction that the fate of his people can still be altered.
"I believe in victory, may God give us peace, may God give us peace," he murmurs."We will resist, Huliaipole is strong."
In the dim light of another house, Polina Plyushchii—eighty-four years old, with weary gestures and watery eyes—tries to accept that leaving is surviving. She cries as they help her out; outside, drones emit a sharp buzz, a harbinger of something worse. She remembers the last time she dared to set foot in the yard.
"It's scary, they're bombing. This morning I heard a drone, then it exploded, it was really loud," she recounts."Is that why you decided to leave?" someone asks. She nods."Yes… you can't even go out into the garden. You're in your own house and you can't even walk in your own yard."
The city, clinging to memory, empties out as everyone flees. Statues—like that of Nestor Makhno, an anarchist figure from the First World War—survive under sandbags that attempt to preserve the intangible: dignity and the story. Among the few who remain, some ride bicycles through ruined streets, exchanging skeptical glances with neighbors, as if in that gesture they could ward off this unbearable loneliness.
The scene is repeated in the surrounding area. Nearby, Zhanna Puzanova and her eighty-eight-year-old mother board another train. Neither has the energy for grand pronouncements; their story is an inventory of scarcity.
—We stayed in the village for a while, but there's nothing left to draw strength from. My mother's health has deteriorated, there's nowhere to buy medicine, no water… we can't live like this anymore.
Police officers and volunteers—like Ihor Pilipushko, 38, a member of the Patrol Chaplain organization—are well aware of the imminent danger. Their greatest fear is not shrapnel, nor even bombs: it is FPV drones, with their first-person view, that lurk invisibly, perched on fiber optic cables.
"FPVs... those are the worst. There's no possible defense," he states, as the roar of a nearby explosion interrupts his explanation.
Inside the vans, a dozen elderly people gasp for breath in time with the explosions. The operation saves twenty-two residents that day: a minuscule number compared to the exodus of recent months. In the background, the military report reinterprets the tragedy in statistics.
Ukrainian Chief of Staff Oleksandr Sirski sums it up with surgical coldness: the Russians have taken three towns in Zaporizhzhia, forcing Ukrainian forces to retreat from five villages. Exhausting battles, considerable losses, retreat to avoid further casualties. Every meter, according to Sirski, costs Russia hundreds of lives, but the scorched earth changes hands and the escape routes narrow.
The reasons for the retreat—the destruction of fortifications, the intensification of attacks, the abandonment of shelters—offer little consolation to those who are leaving. The situation, they say, has also deteriorated in places like Kupiansk and Pokrovsk, where the fighting makes no distinction between heroic defense and desperate flight.
In Huliaipole, there are no children left. The silence is broken only by sirens, engines, and the fragments of life that volunteers strive to wrest from oblivion. A city whose last battle is not an armed conflict, but the stubborn will of its inhabitants to survive until peace returns.
