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Why do some people refuse to leave Bakhmut?

As the battle for Bakhmut rages on, Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers continue to rescue citizens trapped in the conflict zone.

Although the majority of the city’s 70,000 pre-war residents have fled, the Ukrainian military believes between 1,000 to 5,000 people remain.

Ignatius Ivlev-Yorke is a volunteer who does frontline evacuations in the Donbas region. He told Newsday: “We had a family…which refused to leave until we had taken out the body of one of their relatives who had died. First we took out the body then we came back for them and even after that, the grandmother refused to leave, saying ‘this is my house, I have to stay here’.”

(Picture: Shows an aerial view of destroyed buildings in Bakhmut. Credit: Ukrainian Armed Forces handout via Reuters.)

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4 minutes