The note that signals time is running out on Ukraine's front line

Telegraph

2 days ago

A note scrawled in Cyrillic lies on a kitchen table in downtown Dobropillia, eastern Ukraine. It is intended for the eyes of Ukrainian soldiers; its contents are a final plea. Outside, the distant thuds of cluster bombs echo across the town.
'Hello, Eugene and guys! We are sad to say we are leaving. So you can stay for however long you wish. Eugene, you can keep the keys. I wish you all the best, to stay alive and unharmed. Thank you for defending us.
'With deep respect,
'The owner of the flat.
'P.S. Can't get through – there is no signal.'
The note is placed at the centre of the wooden table, carefully handwritten before the family fled their apartment; the washed pots and pans still stacked on the side.
Eugene is a soldier who has been using the flat as a last staging post as he defends the city of Dobropillia, in the Donetsk Oblast. Who will find the note is unclear.
Just seven miles to the south, Russian forces are closing in on the city. As their summer offensive grinds forward, the city stands as the last major settlement between Russian troops and a full encirclement of Pokrovsk, a key logistical hub.
Its capture would help secure the entirety of the Donetsk region, which Vladimir Putin has claimed in his maximalist demands.
Russian troops been making dangerous advances, effectively severing a key road that is the lifeline for Ukraine's defences in Pokrovsk with drone attacks and ambushes.
Time is quickly running out for the soldiers on the front line and the families are having to uproot their lives as the bombs get closer and closer.
Donald Trump has tried to force Putin's hand by cutting his 50-day ceasefire deadline to '10 or 12 days', but the US president is questioning whether the threat of severe sanctions will be enough to stop his Russian counterpart, while Ukrainians fear that Russian troops will ramp up the fighting to secure territory before any deal is made.
For those in Dobropillia, an end to the fighting cannot come soon enough.
Last Thursday, regional authorities issued a mandatory evacuation order for families with children in Dobropillia and nine nearby settlements. Once home to around 28,000 people, locals estimate that 70 to 80 per cent of the population has already fled.
A strict four-hour window, from 11am to 3pm, in which residents can go outside is now in place. The streets are largely deserted, filled only by a small group of the downtrodden who linger in one of the town's destroyed markets.
Alcohol has been banned in Donetsk since the war began, but residents have since sourced other ways of finding it.
Lydia, a lifelong Dobropillia resident who owns a butcher shop in the centre, is staying where she is – for now. Her children have already been evacuated. 'I'll stay until they ban us from working,' she says, locking up before the 3pm curfew.
Among those who have stayed behind are what Ukrainian soldiers refer to as 'the waiters', elderly Ukrainians who romanticise the former days of the Soviet Union along with their youth. The nickname is, as it sounds, people who are waiting for the Russians to come.
It is often difficult to tell who is waiting for the Russians and who is just waiting to leave. Most of the former will not say so publicly.
For over a year, Ukrainian forces have fought to hold this stretch of territory. But in recent weeks, the situation has deteriorated rapidly.
The sudden shift is due in large part to Russia's increased use of fibre-optic drones. Designed to bypass Ukraine's signal-jamming technology, these drones are guided by a thin cable trailing behind them, rendering them effectively unjammable.
Ukraine has struggled to procure enough fibre-optic cable to compete. In their absence, soldiers have resorted to improvised defences like tunnels of netting and shotguns fired from the backs of pickup trucks.
But the Russians have adapted. Swarms of drones poke holes in the netting. Others simply loiter near tunnel exits, waiting.
'Using a car is virtually suicidal,' one soldier stationed nearby tells The Telegraph. To get to their positions, soldiers are now going on foot, sometimes as far as nine miles, carrying their equipment in tow.
One of the roads targeted by Russian forces is the T-05-15, a vital logistical artery supplying Ukrainian defences in Pokrovsk.
For months, Russian drones have surveilled and targeted movement along the route. But on Sunday morning, Russian troops ambushed a Ukrainian unit in Rodyns'ke, a town the road passes through, and now control it.
Though small, Rodyns'ke sits at a critical junction, and control of it gives Russia direct access to the road network feeding Pokrovsk's last defensive lines. Its fall, still unmarked on open-source platforms like DeepState, signals a rapid and dangerous advance.
With Rodyns'ke lost, yet another key supply corridor is cut, leaving Ukraine with virtually only one route out of Pokrovsk.
According to Ukrainian soldiers in the area, the Russians are employing tactics reminiscent of the Germans in the Second World War, identifying weak points in logistics, then moving in to sever them. Cutting off supply lines has been a priority for Putin's commanders since last year.
This emphasis on logistics has helped drive the fierce fighting now erupting around Dobropillia, both in Pokrovsk to the south and Kostiantynivka to the east. 'Once one falls, there goes the other,' one soldier says.
The two fronts are connected not only by fate but also by infrastructure. Highway T-05-14, runs north past Dobropillia towards Kramatorsk. It's the only road that gives Ukraine access to Kostiantynivka as Russia now controls the main road running from Pokrovsk to the embattled city.
With recent Russian advances, the highway has come within range of enemy drones and was closed to all civilian traffic on July 15. Along it, the military is now installing anti-drone netting.
The prospects are grim, and morale among Ukrainian troops here is low. Many have applied to transfer to other brigades, but the process is so mired in bureaucracy that few pursue it unless they are truly desperate.
The constant threat of drones has turned even routine missions into a deathtrap. 'We will lose Pokrovsk,' one soldier says. 'It's just a matter of time.'
The same grim outlook is now spreading among civilians. In Dobropillia, Ruslan is dismantling an air conditioner from the side of his home. He is evacuating to Cherkasy, a city in central Ukraine, the next day.
'It's gotten worse,' he says. 'Even the glide bombs are starting to reach us.'
Across town in an empty playground, Paulina, 15, and her sister Valeria, seven, play on a swing set outside their family's apartment block.
On Wednesday, their evacuation was expected, along with their parents to the neighbouring Dnipro region, taking their cat with them. This would be their second time moving since Russia's invasion.
'I don't feel anything,' Paulina says. Moments later, explosions sound in the distance. She stares ahead, unflinching.
Just across the border in the Dnipro region is the city of Pavlograd, where many evacuees from Donetsk have sought refuge.
Resident Daria Smyrnova says nearly all the apartments are now rented by displaced families.
'I don't understand why they come here,' she says. 'Why don't they go to western Ukraine, where it's safe?'
The fall of Pokrovsk is widely anticipated. If it does, only open farmland will separate the front line from Pavlohrad, terrain that is notoriously difficult for Ukrainian forces to defend.
'They will not stop,' Daria says, referring to the Russian advance that may soon engulf the city.
With their future in the balance, many Ukrainians struggle to make any kind of long-term plans, from financial decisions to larger life decisions. But surrounding this indecision is a makeshift economy that trails the front line wherever it moves.
At the edge of Dobropillia, a roadside shawarma stand called 'Mr Grill' operates from a portable chassis surrounded by gravel, Astroturf, and string lights. Half a dozen soldiers queue for lunch. Pickups speed past, shotguns poking from the windows.
'If they take Dobropillia, we'll move again,' says the woman working inside. 'We move with the front. We always have.'
The fall of Pokrovsk now appears less a question of if and more a matter of when. Russian forces are positioned along the city's perimeter, and some reports indicate units have already been spotted inside.
Nearly a year ago, Russian troops advanced to about six miles from Pokrovsk during Ukraine's surprise incursion into Russia's Kursk region, prompting widespread expectations that the city would collapse. Ukrainian forces, however, managed to hold the line.
Today, that line is beginning to fray. Some believe a full-scale collapse is imminent. Although Russia has not yet launched a sustained assault on the city itself, each passing day brings Pokrovsk closer to encirclement.
Some soldiers predict it could fall within days, others say weeks. Few now speak in terms of uncertainty, only of timing.
Soldiers attribute the rapid acceleration to elite Russian drone units that were previously deployed in Kursk and have now been redirected to Pokrovsk. They believe Putin has fixed his sights on the city and will use the full force of his military to seize it.
Across the war, there is a heightened sense of urgency, both on the battlefield and on the diplomatic front.
All eyes are on Mr Trump and Putin after the US president accelerated his deadlin e to bring Russia to the negotiating table by early August. This increases pressure on Moscow to secure additional territorial gains before diplomacy resumes, if it hopes to achieve the objectives outlined in its memorandum.
For soldiers on the front line, they worry they may not be alive to see the 10 days through – if indeed a deal is struck.
In the abandoned apartment in downtown Dobropillia, the note remains on the kitchen table. It was meant for Ukrainian soldiers, the family's last hope of ever returning home. The question now is, who will be the next to read it?