Evacuations continue in Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk as Russia attacks Donetsk region
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00:00Residents of Pokrovsk flee the city as Russian troops advance.
00:04Authorities in the eastern Ukrainian city ordered it to be evacuated on Monday.
00:09As they departed, locals described a situation where the bombardment of the front just a few miles away
00:15had them constantly on edge.
00:17It's really frightening, impossible to sleep at night.
00:21They're in the air all the time.
00:23Today when we were leaving there were hits and interceptions in the air.
00:26It was terrifying.
00:28We barely got out.
00:32The situation is difficult, very difficult.
00:35And it's gotten especially bad over the past week, week and a half.
00:39It became more difficult.
00:41There are constant explosions.
00:43During the night it's sometimes quiet, but sometimes extremely loud.
00:49Pokrovsk is one of Ukraine's main defensive strongholds and a key logistics hub in the Donetsk region.
00:55Capturing it would bring Russia closer to its stated aim of controlling the entire region,
01:00Ukraine's industrial heartland, which it has illegally annexed.
01:04Moscow has slowly advanced across Donetsk over the past six months,
01:08losing a lot of troops and material in the process.
01:11But it has eventually paid off as Ukrainian troops have been forced to withdraw.
01:16Ukraine's recent incursion into Russia in Kursk, further north,
01:20was partly intended to disrupt Russia's supply lines
01:23but also to force Moscow to spread its resources more thinly in Ukraine's eastern regions.