Terror, grief and rising smoke leave completely empty streets as Ukrainians flee the border town’s fiercest attack yet British News

Russian forces launched a surprise attack early Friday to open a new front in the war.

One of their targets was Vovchansk, a city five kilometers from Ukraine’s border with Russia.

Russian forces reportedly advanced 1 km before being stopped by Ukrainian reinforcements.

Deborah Haynes from Sky was there.

Smoke hung in the air on the road to the border town of Vovchansk in northeastern Ukraine after a surprise Russian offensive.

The forest area that frames the route had caught fire due to heavy bombing.

Sky News followed a rescue team as they raced to Vovchansk in a white van to help evacuate residents amid fears of a major attack from Moscow.

The streets in the part of the city we entered were mostly deserted.

We turned onto a residential street with bungalows.

On the way down there was a group of five elderly residents gathered around a bench. They appeared to be in no hurry to flee, despite the danger and warnings from authorities to the city’s approximately 3,000 residents to leave.

The rescuers – a man and a woman, both volunteers, wearing military uniform – stopped in front of a house.

The man knocked on the door and a window, but there was no answer.

Then the front gate of the neighboring house opened and a petite, white-haired woman wearing a bright orange headscarf appeared.

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Valentyna, 74, said her neighbors had already left but she planned to stay.

The rescue team gently tried to change her mind, saying it wasn’t safe.

Suddenly there was a boom.

It seemed to convince Valentyna that they were right.

She agreed, but had to act quickly – every moment spent on the ground within range of Russian artillery, missiles and drone fire poses a high risk to the rescue team.

As Valentyna changed her socks and headscarf, she explained that life in Vovchansk had been difficult for some time. “But last night it got a lot worse,” she said.

Russian troops occupied the city and large parts of northeastern Ukraine in the first months of the full-scale war before being repulsed by the Ukrainian military.

However, shelling from the Russian side of the border has increased in recent months, although everyone we spoke to said the scale of the Russian attack in the early hours of Friday morning was like nothing they had ever experienced.

After packing a few belongings into two plastic bags, it was time for Valentyna to leave.

She watched as one of her rescuers locked her front door with a power drill.

He also made sure the outer gate was secured before jumping over it while Valentyna climbed into the van.

The team sped away.

As we left town, the fire in the forest seemed larger.

The skyline was also filled with black smoke from the distant clashes.

A few hours earlier, we visited a village near Vovchansk that has become a makeshift gathering point for evacuation teams and fleeing residents.

Dozens of mostly older men and women, looking stressed and frightened, with bags full of belongings – even the odd cat and pet dog – waited to board a large bus tasked with transporting them to a safer location place where they would be given a place to sleep and eat.

They climbed in slowly.

A woman named Maryna, sitting in the carriage next to her husband Yevhen, described the horror of the previous night.

“Fighter planes dropped bombs. There were so many that it seemed like the sky would explode. It was so scary, so loud,” she said.

The couple said that, like many people in this part of the country, they had survived the pain of Russian occupation.

“We have experienced a lot. We were both tortured and interrogated by the Russians,” Maryna said.

Her husband added: “We don’t want to go back there again.”

Maryna continued: “There is a risk that if we re-occupy they will arrest us again. No one knows if we would make it out alive this time.”

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Once everyone was on board, the bus departed, but soon more evacuees arrived – each with a story about this new crisis.

Another woman, also named Valentyna, cried as she said she had to leave her husband behind in Vovchansk while she fled.

“He didn’t want to leave,” she said. “Maybe he’ll change his mind.”

Tamaz Gambarashvili, the city’s mayor, was also at the evacuation collection point.

He said around 500 people were evacuated during the day – all voluntarily.

“It started last night – massive shelling of the city,” the mayor told Sky News.

“Our people have never experienced such shelling before.”

Two people were killed and at least five injured in the attack.

Asked whether he was worried that the Russians might occupy this land again, Mr Gambarashvili said: “We do not believe they will occupy this area again because we believe in our armed forces. They will fight back and beat them back.”

However, he said the Russians had caused great damage to Vovchansk.

Asked whether he had a message for the Russian invaders, the mayor said: “I would like to say: enough. Killing enough people, enough destruction… You have to stop this war.”