For many residents of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, evacuation begins with one defining blast — the explosion that makes it impossible to stay.

For 69-year-old Tetiana Zaichikova, it came when a strike reduced her home to rubble.

The region has been the epicenter of heavy fighting for years and evacuations there have continued as long as Russia’s so-called military operation — more than three years.

Town after town in the region, roughly the size of the U.S. state of Massachusetts, is emptying amid the fighting as Russian forces now control around 70% of the area.

Some are staying in shattered cities, clinging to the hope that the war will end any day — a hope fueled by ongoing peace efforts, largely led by U.S. President Donald Trump, that so far yielded no breakthroughs.

They hold on until it becomes too dangerous even for the military and police to drive into the city.

"When the negotiations started, two or three months ago, we still had hope. We waited for each negotiation, for them to say something,” said 69-year-old Tetiana Zaichikova, who still bears bruises and hematomas the size of her face.

If Zaichikova had taken even one step into the kitchen that night, she is convinced she would not have survived.

In Kostiantynivka — a city that once had a population of approximately 67,000 — conditions in recent months have become apocalyptic: there is no reliable electricity, water, or gas, and nightly barrages that grow heavier with each passing hour.

Russian forces fire all types of weapons while Ukrainian troops answer back, and the former industrial hub has become a proving ground crowded with drones overhead.

Zaichikova knew the city was barely livable, but she clung to the hope she would not lose the place where she had lived all her life and taught music at a kindergarten.

On the night of Aug. 28, after months of rarely leaving her home, she wanted only to make tea before bed. She switched on a night lamp and walked toward the kitchen.

As she reached for the light switch, the blast hit.

A wooden beam and shelves collapsed on her. When she came to, the rubble rose as high as she stood. The entrance to her building was blocked.

Her neighbor swung a sledgehammer through the night until midday, finally breaking a hole she crawled through. Outside, she saw what she believed was the crater of a glide bomb.

A few days later, she left the city.

"The most helpless layers of the population are dying, pensioners, disabled people. In Konstintynivka, they'll start shooting until everything is destroyed," said another of the city's evacuees, Natalia Ivanova.

Speaking from a transit shelter in Lozova, Ivanova said she was headed to her mother's in Kherson after her own home was bombed.

The facility provides registration, food, clothes and psychological support for evacuees from Donetsk and volunteers say their services are massively in demand.

There was previously only one transit shelter in the area, but the government opened two more amid the recent influx of evacuees.

Over the past day, 100 people had passed through the shelter, according to volunteers there, and some 40 stayed overnight.

Many headed off to relatives or friends, or volunteers send them to other regions to find permanent places to stay.

AP video shot by Vasilisa Stepanenko