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You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. It's Friday, December 20th. I'm Greg Dixon. Even as the bitter winter sets in, the war between Russia and Ukraine grinds on.
One of the crucial battles taking place right now is in Ukraine's east. There, Ukrainian soldiers struggle to stabilize thin defensive lines near the city of Pokrovsk against Russia's much larger advancing army. NPR's Brian Mann went close to the front lines there and brings a picture of life in the city amid the sounds of combat.
We drive through sleet and rain toward the northern outskirts of Pokrovsk in an armored car, navigating to avoid Russian troops that now partially encircle this place about a mile outside the city. We stop at a checkpoint where there are soldiers, medical teams, and evacuation crews. I meet a 29-year-old soldier who only gives his first name, Vitaly, for security reasons. He's just back from the front lines and looks worn thin. You're not shooting? No.
Vitaly tells me it's his job to go close to Russian positions to retrieve broken down equipment, like the American-made Bradley fighting vehicle he's driving today. It's been damaged by a landmine and now will be repaired and sent back into the fight. The situation's pretty bad, Vitaly says. The Russian drones are the worst. He uses a curse word to describe the hovering machines that rain bombs from the sky.
I ask if he thinks Ukraine can hold out in Pokrovsk. If it doesn't work, we at least have to try, he says. Pokrovsk was once home to 60,000 people. It's crucial to the war effort for its coal and for its rail and road connections that are used by Ukraine's army. Fortifications here have also held Russia back from cutting into the heartland of Ukraine. If Pokrovsk falls, cities like Dnipro, home to nearly a million people, will be far more vulnerable.
I don't know. Guys, guys...
The guys are holding on by every means, he says. But he tells me Ukraine's soldiers in Pokrovsk aren't getting the support they need. It's politics, Serhii says. We don't have enough shells and other supplies. Just last week, Ukraine's military replaced the general who was leading the defense of Pokrovsk after he failed to stop Russia's advance.
But most military analysts say the reality is Russia's army is simply much larger. More men, more artillery, more shells. We climb back into the armored vehicle and drive deeper into the city. So we're in Bekrovsk now. It's largely abandoned. I'm seeing just very few civilians. One man riding by on his bicycle. A lot of the houses look dark, shattered by artillery and drone strikes. Okay.
Empty grey streets echo with the sound of outgoing artillery. Those are Ukrainian guns blasting at Russian positions just to the south. Remarkably, we find a small grocery and cafe still open and duck inside.
Svetlana Storozhko is serving a customer. When I ask if she's frightened, she says she evacuated her pets but so far chooses to stay. We believe in God and in Ukraine's armed forces, she says. But this is an increasingly dangerous choice. As the battle rages, we find about a dozen people who finally decided it's time to go. They've turned up at an evacuation point.
It's always like this, always the loud bombs, says an elderly man named Serhii. The rest of his family is already gone, and I ask why he stayed so long in a city with no gas for heat, no running water, and war at his doorstep. I didn't want to go because I was born here. It's my hometown, Serhii says. But now I have to leave. Ryan Mann, NPR News, in Pokrovsk, in eastern Ukraine.
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