Russia’s ‘dangerous advance’ in Ukraine’s east stokes fear, divisions

Volunteers of the East SOS evacuation organisation lift a woman onto an evacuation train as local residents flee Russian troop advances in Pokrovsk, Ukraine [Thomas Peter/Reuters]

Kyiv, Ukraine – There is heavy, ”chaotic” fighting in the eastern Ukrainian town of New York.

Its prewar population stood at 3,000, and many worked at the Communist-era phenol plant whose odorous exhaust once filled the town’s centre.