STORY: Massive plumes of smoke and thundering explosions are commonplace in the eastern Ukrainian town of Toretsk.
Russian forces are pummeling the town night and day with rockets, artillery fire and air attacks, part of a broad advance in the Donetsk region that Ukraine has been unable to stop.
This man in military fatigues is a Ukrainian police officer named Ivan, and his job is to get the remaining civilians here out.
He tells one woman, "you need to leave. Don't you see what's going on? We will help evacuate you."
She declines.
Hundreds of officers like Ivan, along with Ukrainian volunteers are trying to do the same in towns and villages along the frontline before they are reduced to rubble and claimed by Russia.
Sergiy tells Ivan he's worried he'll never return.
But he and Irina agree to go.
In between encounters with residents, Ivan tells the camera operator that if they hear aircraft they'll have to run for shelter.
A moment later, they dash back to the car.
On the edge of town, Oleksander doesn't want to abandon his animals. But Ivan convinces him to open the bird coop and unchain the dog. He then wrangles Oleksander back to the vehicle and away from the Russian positions.
Some evacuees are leaving for a second time. Eighty-eight-year-old Valentyna Natyazhko fled earlier but returned for the one thing she could not afford to replace...
She says, "I came to take this fridge. Fridges are expensive, where will I get money to buy one?"
A representative of the local military administration said there were an estimated 5,000 people still in Toretsk. That's compared with 35,000 a decade ago.
She said the government is offering residents whatever it can to get them to safety. But still, she says, people hide in basements.
Some refuse to leave because they have a relative who won't leave.
One seventy-five-year-old said she's staying to care for all the pets left behind.
Ivan knocks on the door of 53-year-old Volodya, and tries to pull him out. Volodya objects that he must ask a neighbor to feed the chicken. But he leaves, without even a shirt on his back.
