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Eyewitness by Stuart Ramsay, chief correspondent

It’s blisteringly hot. We watch as dozens wait in line for the station gates to be opened, for their chance to get on a train to safety.

We have seen over and over again since the start of the war in Ukraine. But it doesn’t get any easier.

In the Donbas, Russian soldiers are bearing down on cities, towns and villages, while the Ukrainian army tries to hold its lines.

Thousands upon thousands of people still remain even as the war approaches.

But when conditions become unbearable, when their homes are destroyed or uninhabitable, reluctantly, people leave, carrying what they can of their past lives.

They end up at the station, in line, trying to escape on the 16.30 express from Pokrovsk in the Donbas region.

Many of those we meet have held out for months.

But as the heavy artillery and street fighting worsens in Severodonetsk and Lysychansk especially, they say they just can’t hold on anymore.

Carefully, volunteers carry the infirm and disabled to small lifts attached to the side of the train carriages.

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