Surrounded on three sides, Kurakhove is Ukraine's new 'Bakhmut'

Yet between 700 and 1,000 local residents remain, most of them living in the basements of apartment buildings, without running water, heating or electricity. The only place to charge phones is in the basement of the building now housing the city administration.

The exact number of people is impossible to determine because, since mid-October, no humanitarian volunteers have come to Kurakhove.

Under attack from artillery, multiple rocket launchers, aerial bombs and drones, Kurakhove has become the new Bakhmut, as Russia continues its drive westward to capture all of the Donbas region. On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the situation in Kurakhove, as well as the key city of Pokrovsk, “the most challenging.”

The hospital, schools, kindergartens, water treatment plant, refugee centre, post office, technical school and cultural centre have all been destroyed. Smoke hangs in the air as bombed-out apartment buildings burn against a backdrop of artillery fire and drones.

Artillerymen of the 33rd Brigade say they are firing around 50 shells per day on the Kurakhove front, indicating critical activity in the Russian army’s offensive operations and the brigade's desperate attempts to stop Russian forces from encircling the city.

Local authorities remain in the city, as well as representatives of the police and local Territorial Defence Forces.

For Artem Shchus, head of police in Kurakhove, there is little hope of defending the city if it becomes surrounded.

“I don’t think it is possible, considering the reality of modern war and modern technologies. In that case, the logistics could be performed only by drones,” he says.

Shchus calls the road to Kurakhove, which is lined with burned-out civilian vehicles, the “road