As a police officer helped her don child-size body armor and an orange helmet, Margaryta Karpova, 12 years old, stood quiet amid the roars and shock waves of heavy shelling. Russian forces had reached less than a mile from her mostly abandoned village in eastern Ukraine.
She held back tears, preparing to leave her home, her tiny village, Novoolenivka, and her father, who stayed to watch over the house. In that moment last fall, the goodbye with him felt terrifyingly final. She and her mother, Liudmyla Karpova, dashed to an armored car and joined more than a million civilians who have fled Ukraine’s Donetsk region since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
But relocation brought them no relief. After they reached temporary housing in western Ukraine, Margaryta began to complain of pain. Doctors soon found she had cancer, a rare and aggressive form called rhabdomyosarcoma that mostly affects children. Now, in Kyiv, the capital, she fights a second, more personal war, against a disease that is consuming her body as the war continues to consume her country.
“As I tell everyone, life has stopped,” her mother said. “The only thing that matters now is saving my child’s life.”
They were able to reunite with Margaryta’s father, and Kyiv offers the care she needs, despite the destruction last July of Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital and pediatric cancer center, in the heart of the city, by a Russian missile.
But the capital does not feel like a refuge, battered by Russian drones and missiles far more often than cities in western Ukraine. Margaryta lamented that while the children being treated alongside her were able to return home between treatments, she could not.
“She’s already had six rounds of chemotherapy,” her mother said. “Now she’ll begin radiation. She’s lost weight, and I have to force her to eat.”
With Russia appearing to prepare for a renewed offensive this summer, the bombardment of the towns and villages along the front has grown more intense. Russian forces dropped more than 5,000 powerful guided bombs along and near the front in April, compared with 3,370 in February, according to the Ukrainian military.
A primary target has been Kostiantynivka, a logistics hub for Ukrainian forces in the east that is north of the Karpovas’ hometown of Novoolenivka. Once an industrial town of about 67,000 people, it now lies mostly in ruins. Russian forces have been advancing on it from the southwest, through places like Novoolenivka, setting the stage for what could be a brutal urban battle.
The intensifying international diplomacy to broker a cease-fire has so far failed to halt — or even curb — the violence. Every Russian advance, no matter how small, uproots more families who sought to hang on to their homes as long as they could.
But some 280,000 civilians, according to government estimates — including more than 21,000 children — remain in the portion of the Donetsk region that Ukraine still controls. Appeals for more evacuations are constant. The New York Times spent time last fall traveling with the White Angels, a special Ukrainian police unit, collecting civilians who could no longer stay.
To reach Novoolenivka and rescue Margaryta and her mother, Maj. Vasyl Pipa, a 41-year-old police officer coordinating evacuations, had to run a gantlet along what officers had begun calling “the road of death.” Russian bombs had obliterated entire homes, leaving not even the foundations.
Burned-out civilian cars littered the roadside — some smoldering, others reduced to contorted, blackened metal. One still contained a charred body; the shelling had not paused long enough for someone to recover it.
The drill was by then grimly familiar, as Major Pipa carefully fitted Margaryta with a vest and helmet, seeking to keep her calm even as artillery thundered nearby.
For her mother, the war never stopped; it simply changed form. The air raid sirens in Kyiv now blend into the rhythm of hospital visits and blood tests.
Margaryta, who recently turned 13, struggles to make sense of her suffering.
“She says, ‘Why me? Why has God punished me?’” Ms. Karpova said, her voice breaking. “She has moments of aggression and says, ‘I’m not beautiful anymore.’ I try to comfort her, but she tells me, ‘You don’t understand my pain.’”
“It’s dangerous here too,” Ms. Karpova added. “Sometimes I look around and don’t know what to expect — now or in an hour, when the explosions start again.”
Still, there is nowhere else for them to go. Their village is wiped out. The house where Ms. Karpova spent 39 years — where she raised her children and buried her father — is gone.
Her own mother remained behind in the now-occupied territory. She managed to get in touch and is alive, staying with relatives, but the uncertainty of what may come weighs heavily. Even knowing there may be nothing left, Ms. Karpova feels drawn to the place she cannot help thinking of as home.
“I will definitely go home,” she said. “My father is buried there — I promised him I would visit his grave.”
Marc Santora has been reporting from Ukraine since the beginning of the war with Russia. He was previously based in London as an international news editor focused on breaking news events and earlier the bureau chief for East and Central Europe, based in Warsaw. He has also reported extensively from Iraq and Africa.
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