As Russians get closer, some Ukrainians refuse to leave

Dobropillia: Kateryna Lomova, 97, stood her ground as police rescuers and family members begged her to evacuate her ramshackle home in an area of eastern Ukraine battered by Russian artillery, bombs and drones fired from some 15 km (nine miles) away.

"No, no - I won't go right now," said Lomova, hunched in her doorway, wearing a bright green headscarf and wrapped in thick layers of mismatched clothes. "Maybe another time, but not now." Lomova's home lies on the outskirts of Dobropillia, one of many towns and villages in the Donetsk region wrecked by years of heavy Russian bombardment and now facing increased danger as Moscow's troops grind ever closer.

The White Angel rescue team, armed with shotguns and beeping drone monitoring devices, has been driving around the Dobropillia area searching for potential evacuees as artillery rumbles in the distance.

The main road is shrouded in netting to defend against drones that roam the skies with deadly agility and accuracy - the leading cause of death in front-line areas. Burnt-out cars and destroyed homes line the route.

Some residents seem eager to leave but a few are still refusing to budge, often because they are sick, elderly or have no family or means to live elsewhere. In Lomova's case, a relative in Spain sought to reassure the frail woman over a video call that she could, possibly, make her way across Europe to join the family.

"We'll figure it out - first just leave Dobropillia," the relative, Liudmyla, told Lomova as the armed, camouflage-clad crew looked on. "We're all worried about you."

The White Angel crew, part of the regional police force, offered to drive Lomova to the nearby hub of Kramatorsk, where volunteers would in turn shuttle her 100 km (62 miles) away to the city of Pavlohrad. But she refused.

Heavily hit villages

Nearly four years into Russia's full-scale invasion, President Vladimir Putin is demanding that Ukraine give up the whole Donbas - an industrialised swathe of eastern Ukraine comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions - as one of his conditions for ending the war, something Kyiv refuses to do.

"They're wiping the village from the face of the earth, street by street," said 56-year-old Olena Kotova, who left the nearby settlement of Kryvorizhzhia.

"And it goes like that, methodically, throughout the entire village: missile strikes, Shahed drones."

A member of the White Angel crew, Gennadii Yudin, said some residents who had evacuated to safer areas of Ukraine had subsequently returned to their damaged homes.

That includes families with children who have later been hurt or killed, he said.

"The parents don't fully understand what can happen, and they put themselves and their children in danger," he said.

Earlier this week, a family was wounded while collecting water near the besieged city of Kostiantynivka some 45 km away, Yudin added. Speaking to her Spain-based relative via video, Lomova said her windows had recently been blown out, but that she was still not prepared to leave.

Yudin's team, returning later to see if she had changed her mind, asked when she thought she might be ready.

"Who knows when?" she said, head bowed. "I don't want to leave my home."