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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Peter Beaumont in Kramatorsk

Race to get last children out of Bakhmut as city becomes ‘hell on earth’

Destroyed buildings in Bakhmut, in the Donbas, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine.
Destroyed buildings in Bakhmut, in the Donbas, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine. Photograph: RFE/RL/SERHII NUZHNENKO/Reuters

War breeds euphemism and metaphor. In the battle for the Donbas city of Bakhmut, threatened with a closing encirclement by Russian forces after seven months of bitter fighting, there are “White Angels” and “Dark Angels”, the “road of life” (the Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway, which is anything but) and the “Invincibility Centre”.

The White Angels, a police evacuation group, scour the lethal districts of the shell-ruined city to evacuate children and the elderly.

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