With Ukraine’s forces at risk of encirclement, the top military commander ordered a retreat. In startlingly candid accounts, soldiers described disarray and despair.
Ukrainians say the explosions 37 minutes apart in Pokrovsk, which killed at least nine people and injured 82 others, were a “double tap” intended to kill rescuers responding to the first strike.
More than 5.5 million people who left after the war began in February 2022 have gone back home — and not just to large cities like Kyiv or Dnipro, but to small places near the front line, as well.