The transit center in Pavlohrad, a city just kilometers from the front lines, aims to assist displaced persons for a maximum of three days before finding them more stable housing elsewhere in the country. However, few are willing to move too far from their homes.

 

By Davide Maria De Luca for INTERSOS

 

When people flee the war in Donbas, the first place they often encounter is the Pavlohrad evacuation center. It is a repurposed school building surrounded by tents, located at the entrance of this city of 100,000 residents—roughly ninety minutes from Pokrovsk, which has been the theater of intense fighting in Ukraine for over a year.

Pavlohrad is relatively safe, yet bombs and missiles strike here occasionally. Inside the building, white netting is stretched across every window to catch glass shards in the event an explosion shatters the panes.

Here, supported by European Union funding, INTERSOS works alongside its Ukrainian partner organization, Posmishka, to provide aid and support to those fleeing the advancing front line.

“We receive up to 450 people a day,” says Alla Rybatseva, a representative of the Donetsk regional government and coordinator of the center. This number grew throughout the summer as the Russian offensive expanded, she explains.

“The people arriving here are primarily the elderly, followed by families with children. Those with the financial means leave on their own without passing through here. This center is for those who wouldn’t be able to manage without outside help.”

Rybatseva is an internally displaced person herself, much like the people she assists. Before the full-scale invasion, she worked as a local administrator in Novohrodivska, in the Donetsk region. When Russian troops reached her village in July 2024, she was forced to move further west along with the rest of the administration, which now operates “in exile” from Pavlohrad.

“People are under immense stress when they arrive, and it helps them to meet someone who has lived through the same experiences.”

The Pavlohrad site is a transit center where the goal is to assist people for a maximum of three days before relocating them to more stable situations across the country, ideally far from the fighting. However, few are willing to move to the opposite side of Ukraine. Nearly everyone wants to stay as close as possible to their homes—or what remains of them.

 

(Archive photo)