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You can find a microcosm of Ukraine's defense against Russia by visiting a single small city. It's called Pokrovsk. Ukrainians hold it for now, and they're trying to stabilize their defensive lines against more numerous Russian attackers. NPR's Brian Mann was inside the city yesterday and brings us the sounds of combat.
(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLE WHIRRING)
BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLE HONKING)
MANN: 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, Vitale (ph), for security reasons. He's just back from the front lines and looks worn thin.
VITALE: (Speaking Ukrainian).
MANN: Vitale 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 land mine and now will be repaired and sent back into the fight. The situation's pretty bad, Vitale 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.
VITALE: (Speaking Ukrainian).
MANN: "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 1 million people, will be far more vulnerable. Nearby, I meet Serhii (ph), a gray-haired man smoking a cigarette while leaning against the ambulance he drives. I ask what he's seeing as he pulls wounded soldiers from the front, and he shakes his head.
SERHII: (Speaking Ukrainian).
MANN: "The guys are holding on by every means," he says. But he tells me Ukraine's soldiers and Pokrovsk aren't getting the support they need.
SERHII: (Speaking Ukrainian).
MANN: 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOORS SHUTTING)
MANN: We climb back into the armored vehicle and drive deeper into the city.
So we're in Pokrovsk now. It's largely abandoned. I'm seeing just very few civilians, one man riding by on his bicycle. But a lot of the houses look dark, shattered by artillery and drone strikes.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARTILLERY FIRING)
MANN: Empty gray 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.
(CROSSTALK)
MANN: Svitlana Storozhko (ph) is serving a customer. When I ask if she's frightened, she says she evacuated her pets but so far chooses to stay.
SVITLANA STOROZHKO: (Speaking Ukrainian).
MANN: "We believe in God and in Ukraine's armed forces," she says. But this is an increasingly dangerous choice.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARTILLERY EXPLODING)
MANN: 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.
SERHEI: (Speaking Ukrainian).
MANN: It's always like this, always the loud bombs, says an elderly man named Serhei. The rest of his family has 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.
SERHEI: (Speaking Ukrainian).
MANN: "I didn't want to go because I was born here. It's my hometown," Serhei says. "But now I have to leave."
Brian Mann, NPR News, in Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine.
(SOUNDBITE OF STRONG.AL& AND CLOUDSURFIN'S "AURORA") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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