DONETSK REGION: On a platform near the east Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, Anna Dvoryaninova waited for a train she never wanted to take, leaving her home behind as Russian forces push deeper into her native Donetsk region.

With hundreds of others, the mother-of-six hurried her children onto a train, telling an older child to carry a toddler as late-summer sunshine heated the train station.

She held back tears as she told AFP that, throughout more than two years of war, she had hoped to stay in her village in the Pokrovsk area.

“It’s my home. I was born here. I got married here. I got divorced here, had kids here,” the 35-year-old said, adding in a trembling voice: “It’s my beloved Donbas.”

But Russian forces are now advancing towards Pokrovsk and Kyiv has ordered the evacuation of families with children to towns and cities further west.

With Moscow’s army several kilometres away, Dvoryaninova decided it was time to go and earlier this week called authorities to ask how she could get her family out.

She wheeled suitcases up to the train — painted in Ukraine’s blue and yellow national colours — and rushed her children on.

Others on the platform clutched suitcases, plastic bags and pets, with some elderly people brought on wheelchairs — waiting for trains headed westwards away from the fighting.