In recent months, Ukraine has urged civilians to evacuate — again — not just from Kobyansk but also from dozens of villages to the west, a grim sign that Kiev fears the Russians could move on. On Saturday, they took control of the small settlement of Krokhmalen, southeast of the city. Bring them a little closer to the river.
Although Kiev has tried to downplay the loss, saying the village was home to only about five families before the war, the development and evacuation orders have raised fears that Ukrainian forces are preparing to hand over more land.
“It's very scary,” said Diana Shapovalova, 34, one of the last remaining gynecologists working in the area. “We are ready to evacuate. We have all our stuff packed. Our kids know they need to be prepared.”
“We live in a dangerous place,” she added.
The river running through Kubyansk could serve as a natural defense in the event of further Russian advances. But Russia has captured the city before, and a recent assessment by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, concluded that Moscow has sent soldiers to the region who appear to be “less degraded” than soldiers deployed elsewhere. Ukraine, in turn, is strengthening its defenses.
Ukraine's surprise counteroffensive in this region stunned the world in the fall of 2022, as Russian forces fled en masse from towns they had occupied for months with little fighting. Kiev was hoping to achieve similar victories when it launched another counterattack last summer, largely focused in the south. But the efforts failed, and now it appears that the Russians are the ones on the offensive, with aid to Ukraine halted in Washington and Brussels.
Shapovalova lives in the small town of Shevchenkov, but with no gynecologists in Kubyansk, her patients often travel long, dangerous roads from east of the river to see her. They also treat trauma victims and wounded soldiers before sending them to larger hospitals.
Civilians moving away from the front are asked to stop in Shevchenkov for interviews with police and intelligence officers, who check their phones and investigate any possible ties to Russian forces. Despite evacuation orders, fewer than a dozen people — mostly elderly people — pass through the town every day, said a police officer in the town, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his family lives under Russian occupation.
He said that in the past month, there has been an increase in artillery, aviation bombs and guided missiles in and around Kubyansk. “Not a day went by that nothing hit the area,” he said. “There are many wounded and many dead, both soldiers and civilians.”
Svetlana Perebadia, 54, director of the hospital where Shapovalova works, said she was also “very afraid” that Russia might reoccupy the area. But their patients, she said, often refuse to flee “until they encounter a projectile landing in their neighbor's house or garden.”
This is the case for Nastya Primenko, who received an eviction notice for her village of Hrochevka on January 16, as she entered the 15th week of pregnancy. The village is already within range of some Russian artillery systems and has been bombed before.
But even thinking about leaving home, she said, “would require the Russians moving near the village or landing something near my house.”
Right now, they're still 15 miles away. Although many locals have already left the village, Primenko still feels safe and normal. One local woman still offers manicures.
Primenko, 24, knows the horrors of occupation firsthand. Her family buried her father's military documents near the lake in the city, fearing that Russian forces would find them and take revenge. Her neighbor's house was looted. She fled in July 2022, fearing that Russian soldiers would rape her. She did not return until a week after liberation, when a Russian attack across the river killed her maternal grandmother.
On the trip home for burial, she meets a charming red-haired dance instructor turned soldier named Roman, who helps liberate Hrushevka from Russian control. They married in March, and he is now serving in the Donetsk region, in the same brigade as her father, while she remains at home with her paternal grandparents.
Primenko said she doubted that Ukrainian forces would cede Kubyansk. The presence of relatives in the army also strengthened her family's conviction that they did not need to be evacuated.
Her grandmother, Nadia Sveckar, 63, said: “If something happens, they will tell us: ‘Leave.’”
The baby is due in July. “We hope this will all be over by then,” Primenko said. “I don't want my child to know war.”
Along the way, there are others who are skeptical.
“I am more afraid of a second occupation than any direct bombing,” said Claudia, 75, who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used in case the Russians return. “We didn’t think it would come to this. We are afraid for others and afraid for ourselves.”
Claudia lives in the village of Staroverivka, which is adjacent to Hrushevka but is in a different area that has not yet been evacuated. However, the sound of outgoing artillery regularly echoes in the background, and she prepares for the worst. On Sunday morning, after a night of heavy bombing across the river, her neighbor Svetlana, 55, opened her phone and read aloud that Russia had captured Krokhmalen.
“We need more weapons,” Claudia said, holding back tears. “We need them immediately.”
In the direction of Kubyansk, in the village of Nechvolodivka, where a local man was killed in an attack on January 7, Ivan Bedak, 74, said he assumed the order was given because “the line might move.”
Pedek trusts the Ukrainian army, but whether the troops are able to hold the front is “a more difficult question.”
“We don't have equipment,” he said. “We lack manpower.”
Irina Korillova, 31, now eight months pregnant, waited until the last minute to evacuate the eastern side of the river. She also did not see a doctor until she was five months pregnant, avoiding the dangerous trip across the river to Shevchenkov.
At Shapovalova's urging, she finally left for Kharkiv in December amid fears that she might lose custody of her two older children, aged 9 and 7.
“If I hadn’t been pregnant, I wouldn’t have left,” she said. Her family has become accustomed to bombings, and believes that civilians are only being evacuated to prevent Russian sympathizers from sharing information about Ukrainian troop movements.
Shapovalova persuaded another patient, Irina Kasyanova, 32, to evacuate from the other side of the river a few weeks before giving birth to her child in September.
Before that, the mother had avoided driving through Kobyansk on her way to appointments, for fear of being killed. She now resides with her family and pets in a house in Shevchenkov owned by the Shapovalova family. In her village, only 20 remain of the 3,000 people who once lived there.
But Shapovalova is concerned that Shevchenkov won't feel close enough to the front for safety. The doctor actually fled the Russian occupation with her family in June 2022, and moved to Ohio, where she worked as a cleaner. When she returned to her home and her career, she thought her ordeal was over. Now, she's not sure.
“We still believe in the military,” she said. But blind belief is not enough when we hear the whistle of shells and explosions.”
