POKROVSK, Sept 09 (BBC): Fleeing the town she has lived in most of her life, Maria Honcharenko is taking just one small bag, and her two tiny kittens.
After stubbornly staying on in the east Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, the 69-year-old is now heeding advice and preparing to leave.
"My heart stops when I hear a bang," she tells me, crying. She's holding an old push-button phone where emergency contacts are saved.
The front line is less than 8km (4.9 miles) from Pokrovsk. Serhiy Dobryak, the head of the city's military administration, says that Russians target the city not just with ballistic missiles and multiple rocket launchers - they also now strike with guided bombs and even artillery, as the city is now within the range of those weapons too.
"Look what Russians did to us. I worked here for 30 years and now I am leaving everything behind," she says, breaking down in tears. Pokrovsk is a key transportation hub. If it falls, then Russian forces will cut off one of the main supply routes in the region. This will likely force Ukraine to retreat from Chasiv Yar and the front line will move closer to Kramatorsk.
For Ukraine, this would effectively mean the loss of almost the entire Donetsk region, which the Kremlin has fought to capture since the beginning of their invasion.
The Ukrainian military admits that its incursion into Russia's Kursk region failed to force Moscow to divert its troops from eastern Ukraine.
And some observers argue that this move, which certainly helped to boost morale among the soldiers, left the strategic supply route vulnerable to Russian attacks.
On Sunday, Russia claimed to have taken control of the village of Novohrodivka, just 10km from Pokrovsk. Kyiv has not commented but sources told the BBC that Ukrainian forces have retreated from there.
The space on the evacuation bus quickly fills up. A woman with a five-year old daughter climbs on board. This is their second evacuation. The first time it was in 2022 when they fled from a border town after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
This city is clearly Moscow's top priority. According to Serhiy Dobryak, the head of Pokrovsk's military administration, the ratio of forces fighting in that direction is 10 to one in Russia's favour.
