‘I couldn’t take it any more’: holdouts quit Kupiansk after renewed Russian shelling

People who stayed through last year's occupation are now abandoning the city amid fears of a Bakhmut 2.0'

Antonina Sanina, 75, had spent the last two nights hiding in the basement of her apartment block in Kupiansk. She had endured six and a half months of Russian occupation last year, but now the renewed shelling of the city had prompted her to abandon her home. I couldn't take it any more," she said a few minutes after local volunteers had driven her to safety.

She said eight neighbours hid in the cellar with her as the Russians targeted what they thought, wrongly, was a barracks nearby. You could barely sleep. It would be on and off. Then you'd just wake up and you wouldn't know - was that an actual hit or was it a dream?" A day before she took flight, one civilian was killed and 11 injured in a daytime artillery strike on the city centre.