The dogs that flee from Vovchansk do so nervous and trembling. Observing them is a way to understand that in this town north of the Ukrainian province of Kharkiv, on the border with Russia, the gates of hell have opened. Pets are evacuated with their owners to a shelter a few kilometers from the municipality. They are humble people from an area that is suffering the second Russian offensive in more than two years of war. A neighbor gets out of a van with blood in his ears and nose, which is also broken. An explosion a few meters away has left him bruised, perhaps for life.
Vovchansk is the main objective of a new lightning Russian military campaign that began on May 10. It is an especially coveted conquest because its urban center would be an ideal center to concentrate troops for a future advance towards Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city. Last Thursday there were about 300 inhabitants left in the town, out of a pre-war population of 17,000 people. There is only room for death there. In neighboring towns too. The esplanade where the rescued civilians arrived was attacked that afternoon on May 16 with Russian cluster munitions: five people were injured, including the mayor, Tamaz Gambarashvili.
It was not the first multiple explosion that was heard with the characteristic sound of cluster munition, a weapon banned in more than 100 countries due to its special lethality in urban areas with a civilian population. The Morning Express team and other journalists had had to leave that same place urgently on Wednesday because the Ukrainian army had intercepted a radio communication from the invader transmitting the coordinates of the site to bomb it. The attack occurred a day later.
On the horizon, columns of smoke rise from multiple villages, but it is in Vovchansk where the clatter of rifles, the roar of artillery that does not stop for a second, the fire and its ashes cover the space, predicting a complete destruction of the municipality, as It happened before in Bakhmut, in Chasiv Yar and in many other towns in Ukraine. The families that leave there cry and commiserate about their uncertain fate while the police identify them and supply them with food from the NGO World Central Kitchen, run by Spanish chef José Andrés. Despair is also evident in a man detained after being evacuated carrying four large bags where he hides dozens of products that he has stolen from abandoned Vovchansk stores. The police notify him that he will be transferred to the military recruiting office to be recruited into the ranks.
Oleksi Jarkivskii, head of a special operations unit of the Ukrainian police, prepares the next civilian extraction mission. With other neighbors, they locate using maps two homes where an elderly man and a family of a married couple and his son reside. Together with Jarkivskii and his men, the Kharkiv Media Hub organization and the special envoy of Morning Express will enter Vovchansk. Before the start, an SUV with four soldiers from the Ukrainian assault forces bursts onto the scene.
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On the access road to Vovchansk, the same one that Jarkivskii’s team will take minutes later, they have just been attacked by a Russian bomb drone. The drone has fallen in front of the vehicle and the radiator has been damaged. The four soldiers get out of the car with adrenaline pumping, they check each other’s bodies to identify any injuries – two of them have slight scratches – and after that, they hug each other: they are not dead by a meter.

The two evacuation cars travel to Vovchansk at 160 kilometers per hour along a country road. The main entrance street to the town is blocked by a burned-out Ukrainian tank. Next to it lies a destroyed American-made infantry vehicle. The houses and flower beds on the street are smoking from recent artillery hits. When rounding a curve—where the invading army knows that vehicles must slow down—a shell projectile hits less than 50 meters from the two evacuation cars.
Discussion under the bombs
The Nikolin family refuses to leave Vovchansk. His house is very humble and disorder predominates inside. On the kitchen table are the remains of a frugal breakfast, the last meal they will celebrate at home. The mother confronts Jarkivskii because they don’t want to leave. She says her 14-year-old son doesn’t want to leave there. At the same time, just 100 meters away, in an adjacent field, several Russian grad rockets hit.
New columns of smoke rise above the row of trees on the street and after 15 minutes of discussions, the Nikolins agree to leave. A member of the rescue team would later explain to this newspaper that the family is “pro-Russian,” like many others who decide to remain in the region: “The police have been told that if they leave, the city will be occupied by the banderistas”, a common expression in Russia to refer to the followers of the Ukrainian ultranationalist leader of the 1930s, Stepan Bandera.
Loading the family’s belongings does not take more than another quarter of an hour, including free-range animals in cages. The main problem is controlling and loading two Nikolin dogs into the vehicles, driven crazy by the explosions and the presence of armed strangers. One of them repeatedly bit the correspondent of this newspaper, who was later treated by the health services. One of Jarkivskii’s men was watching from the street for the possible appearance of Russian drones. Upon hearing the sound of one of these devices approaching, the police gave the order to leave the scene immediately.
The escape from Vovchansk was like the arrival: a race at devilish speed, accompanied by more explosions, the panting of the dogs, the screams of the mother and the sobs of the teenager. Once outside their village, the Nikolins unloaded their possessions and animals at the evacuee reception point. Disoriented by the experience, they said they did not know where they would live from now on. A van was waiting to take you 25 kilometers away, to the city of Kharkiv.
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