"We're sitting on our suitcases," a woman named Natalia said in Sviatohorivka, a village on the outskirts of the town of Dobropillia, in eastern Ukraine. Russia's army has advanced to within almost 10 kilometers (6 miles) of her home. Ukrainian soldiers have managed to retake some places from Russia, but the villages all around are still under constant bombardment.

The only reason Natalia hasn't left Sviatohorivka yet is that her elderly parents refuse to evacuate. "My father says, 'I was born here, and this is where I'll die,'" Natalia said. "And I say: 'You will die. But who will bury you when everyone is gone?'"

DW met with Natalia in an almost-deserted village for an evacuation organized, with the help of volunteers, by officers from a special Ukrainian police unit known as the White Angels.

Evacuating people in Donbas is dangerous, so the group travels in an armored vehicle equipped with electronic combat equipment. David, a volunteer from the AURA charitable mission, is driving, while police officer Ilia Malzev studies the map. They have to pick up people at two different addresses in Sviatohorivka.

'And where will I live?'

Seventy-four-year-old Maria is waiting at the first address. She's already packed her belongings. A policeman collects her bags while a volunteer helps her to the car. Maria can only walk slowly, leaning on a cane. Finally she gets into the vehicle, breathing hard.

"The drones fly straight at us. I actually wanted to stay; I thought, well, I'm already old. But this life is forcing me to go. It's unbearable; there's only one neighbor left on our street, everyone else has gone," she tells us.

The aid workers can't immediately locate the second address. Hardly anyone here knows 70-year-old Tetiana, whose name is on the list of people to be evacuated. Finally, a police officer finds her in one of the abandoned houses. She took refuge here a week ago, after her house in nearby Dobropillia was destroyed by missiles. "I had to leave all my things behind," she tells us.

"Come on, let's go! There's no point staying here," Malzev tries to persuade Tetiana. The old lady buries her face in her hands. She doesn't want to go with the helpers at first, but in the end she thanks them. "And I thought everyone had forgotten me," she says, and smiles.

On the way out of Sviatohorivka, the 70-year-old asks where she will collect her pension in future. "Where you'll be living," the helpers tell her. "And where will I live?" she asks.

'The situation has drastically changed'

Finding accommodation for people from the towns and villages near the frontline is as difficult as the evacuation itself, says Konstantin Tunyzkyi, another White Angels policeman who is himself an internally displaced person. Tunyzkyi is originally from in the city of Kurakhove, which has been occupied by Russia since the start of this year.

The evacuees from Dobropillia, Sviatohorivka, and other villages are initially brought to a staging post in the Donetsk region, where volunteers from various charitable organizations are active. They then take people further west, to the region of Dnipropetrovsk, where they're either put on trains or put up in emergency shelters. This week, the number of evacuees far exceeded the available accommodation, and many had to sleep in tents.

Tunyzkyi says they're receiving dozens of evacuation requests every day from people in and around Dobropillia. "A whole apartment block in Dobropillia was destroyed by a guided missile. Five people waiting for us had spent the night there," he reports. "The situation has drastically changed."

He explains that if the evacuation units are unable to go into an area because it's too dangerous, they tell people to leave on foot. On one occasion they received a call from an elderly couple. "There was heavy fighting in the village of Nikanorovka. An elderly couple with walking difficulties brought a bedbound old woman to the neighboring village of Bilezke in a wheelbarrow," he says. "They said Russian soldiers had shot the woman's son, as well as her neighbors, who were hiding in the cellar."

'People quickly packed up their things'

People are also leaving Dobropillia and the surrounding area in their own vehicles. A car with a white ribbon and a trailer attached stops at the evacuation point. The ribbon is intended to protect it from Russian drones, while the trailer is to transport her entire life somewhere else, explains Natalia, the owner of the car. She, her husband, and their cat have just left Dobropillia.

"A lot of houses there have been destroyed. The town feels really creepy. People quickly packed up their things and left," she says. "To be honest, I don't know what we'll do next. I have to get over all this first."

Natalia and her husband are headed for Ternopil in western Ukraine, where they plan to visit their son. He was a soldier in the army, but was invalided out after being injured. Natalia's mother is still in Dobropillia. "I couldn't persuade her," Natalia sighs.

"People do sometimes refuse to be evacuated. Usually it's because relatives have put them on a list, but they didn't ask for it themselves," Tunyzkyi explains. The helpers try to convince them. "There'll come a time when no one will be able to get to them anymore."

'My advice is: Get yourself to safety'

Fifty-six-year-old Oleh from Pokrovsk knows what it's like not to want to leave. "My advice is: Get yourself to safety," he urges. Oleh has injuries to his face, a suture above his eye, and a bandaged hand. He left Pokrovsk on a bicycle. "I got away. I was lucky. But all along the road there were broken bicycles, broken-down motorbikes and cars."

Three days earlier, a Russian combat drone flew into Oleh's garden. "It was like a little plane, going round in circles. I didn't realize it was so dangerous. The sudden explosion almost burned out my eyes," he says. His neighbors came to his aid. As a result of the drone attack, Oleh is now partially blind.

He decided to leave, because not even the hospitals in Pokrovsk are functioning now. "We're under constant bombardment. Houses are burning. The town doesn't exist anymore," he says.

In June, Oleh's brother was killed by an artillery shell. He had to bury him beside a fence. "Lots of people are buried in gardens," Oleh says.

"If anyone still has doubts, my advice to them is: Go!" he repeats. Last September, at the start of the evacuation of Pokrovsk, he sent his wife and daughter to Odesa, but refused to leave himself. Back then, he didn't want to abandon his house.

"I was attached to my possessions. But life is more precious," he says. Now, as he travels to join his wife and child, his possessions fit into just two bags.

This article was originally written in Ukrainian.