‘Please God let him live’: Times reporters witness desperation as Russia closes in.

A Times reporting team visited the beleaguered eastern Ukrainian town of Sievierodonetsk, driving through small villages and fields to avoid Russian shelling and speeding across the single lane bridge that is the only remaining route in.

With the town flanked on three sides by Russian forces, panic was in the air.

“Please God let him live,” one woman wailed as she climbed down from an ambulance bearing her husband, her hands covered in blood. “You cannot imagine what a person he is. He is a golden person.”

Police medics drew the woman, who gave her name as Olha, inside their first aid post as she appealed for help for her husband who lay in the ambulance.

But the stretcher bearers were already standing down. Her husband, Serhii, had died, the latest victim of the barrage of artillery and gunfire Russian forces have rained down on the city, one of the last major Ukrainian strongholds in the region. Read more

@nytimes