As Russia Advances in Ukraine, a Cop Has to Flee City After City

The belongings of Volodymyr Nikulin, a Ukrainian police officer stationed near the country’s eastern front line, boil down to this: a shrapnel-riddled car, a small sack stuffed with sweaters and pants, and two plastic bags filled with basic food and medicine.

Keeping it simple is essential for Mr. Nikulin, who has had to leave three cities to escape the advance of Russian forces in the country’s eastern Donbas region, losing his home each time. So he has learned to live with little, and to be ready to pack up on short notice.

He has barely bothered to settle into the friend’s apartment he currently occupies in Sloviansk, a city 15 miles from the combat zone, leaving the bedroom untouched and sleeping instead in a small office. The distant rumble of Russian bombing regularly echoes through the walls, a reminder he may soon have to leave everything behind, again.

“Who knows where I’ll be in a few months?” Mr. Nikulin said on a recent morning last month in Sloviansk, acknowledging that Russian forces in the area were creeping closer. He joked that he could at least count on his damaged car, recalling how it had helped him escape several Russian attacks.

“It’s my lucky car,” Mr. Nikulin, a 53-year-old police lieutenant colonel, said with a thin smile.

Mr. Nikulin’s story of fleeing city after city under assault — Donetsk in 2014, when Russian-backed separatists took control of the city; and then, after Russia’s full-scale invasion began, Mariupol in 2022 and Myrnohrad this summer — is emblematic of the plight of millions of Ukrainians displaced by the war. Like many, he has left beloved towns, watched his homes be destroyed or occupied, and mourned neighbors killed in the fighting.

As a police officer evacuating besieged cities, he has also braved ordeals, including helping journalists escape Mariupol so they could reveal harrowing images of the Russian onslaught there.

Working for the national police near the front lines means living with constant uncertainty amid Russia’s near-daily attacks. Mr. Nikulin often rushes to sites hit by missiles to help pull the wounded from the rubble. A police station where he used to work has been struck several times, and colleagues have been killed while guarding stations bombed by Russian forces.

“We’re targets for the Russians,” Mr. Nikulin said as he drove through Kramatorsk, another frontline city near Sloviansk. He was wearing a khaki jacket without insignia, to avoid being identified by disloyal locals who might tip off the Russians.

With Russian troops now advancing steadily in the Donbas, Mr. Nikulin’s cycle of evacuations may be far from over. Still, he believes he will one day return to his hometown, Donetsk, confident that the Ukrainian army will turn the tide on the battlefield.

A reserved man with piercing blue eyes, Mr. Nikulin grew up in Donetsk in the 1970s and 1980s when it was part of the Soviet Union. The son of a miner and a garment factory worker, he aspired to a military career and studied at the Donetsk Military Academy. He graduated in 1992, a year after Ukraine gained independence from the U.S.S.R., and he eventually joined the local police force.

Back then, Donetsk was afflicted by gang wars fueled by the post-Soviet economic collapse. “Everyday, there were several murders using firearms and bombs,” he recalled, as local businessmen, backed by gangs, fought for control over state-owned assets.

But over time, the city transformed and pacified. Mr. Nikulin grew fond of its gritty charm, a mining powerhouse reborn with gleaming skyscrapers and artsy cafes. One of his happiest memories is watching a 2012 European Soccer Championship quarterfinal match in Donetsk’s new stadium.

“The city was changing, developing, becoming more European,” he said.

Then, in the spring of 2014, pro-Kremlin, Russian-backed insurgents staged an armed uprising in Donetsk, rallying against Ukraine’s turn West. As the rebels quickly overran the city, Mr. Nikulin said he worked covertly with colleagues to secure control of computer servers containing critical financial and security data.

When he was finally forced to leave Donetsk that July, he packed only summer clothes, thinking he would return in a few weeks. “T-shirts, a cap, shorts — no jacket,” he said.

“No one understood that we would be gone for such a long time,” he said. He paused briefly and added, “I don’t want to say forever.”

Mr. Nikulin moved with his police department to the port city of Mariupol, further south, and quickly felt at home again. A dozen miles from Russian-seized territory to the east, Mariupol became an “island of freedom” for those fleeing Russian occupation, he said. Its lively markets and sunlit promenades along the Azov Sea offered a precious sense of normalcy.

Until Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Mariupol was a prime target for Moscow’s forces, which soon encircled the city. Inside, Mr. Nikulin and his colleagues worked to keep order, tackling looters who raided stores as panic gripped the besieged population, and assisting residents when Russian bombs fell on their homes.

The documentary “20 Days in Mariupol,” filmed by Associated Press journalists who covered Russia’s siege of the city, opens with a tense scene of Mr. Nikulin, clad in body armor, inside a hospital as Russian tanks surround it. “Tanks have entered,” he is heard saying over a walkie-talkie, alerting Ukrainian forces. “I have a visual on it myself.”

Without Mr. Nikulin, the documentary, which won an Oscar this year for its gut-wrenching account of Russia’s brutal assault, might never have seen the light of day.

In Mariupol, he helped the Associated Press reporters find internet access amid attacks so they could transmit their images. Then, he smuggled them out of the city, driving them through 15 Russian checkpoints in his bomb-damaged car, with plastic covering its smashed windows. They hoped the Russian soldiers would not search the car and find the reporters’ cameras hidden under the seats, which would mean immediate arrest — or worse.

“It was stressful,” Mr. Nikulin said, recalling how he tried to distract the soldiers at checkpoints by offering them cigarettes.

Mykhailo Vershynin, who led the Patrol Police in Mariupol during its defense, said Mr. Nikulin “was like a father” to the journalists. “He really wanted the world to know what happened to Mariupol.”

After escaping Mariupol, Mr. Nikulin relocated to Myrnohrad, about 80 miles north. From there, he continued helping evacuate frontline eastern towns like Toretsk, which Russian forces recently entered.

His phone is full of videos showing brick houses flattened by bombs. Still, convincing residents to leave could be difficult, he said, because some are old and have never lived elsewhere, while others believe they will be better off under Russian rule.

“It’s complicated,” he said with a sigh. “But we have to get these people out.”

“For him, it’s more than just service — it’s deeply personal,” said Yevhen Tuzov, a Ukrainian volunteer who has worked with Mr. Nikulin on evacuation missions, noting that the police officer couldn’t bear to watch his home region be chipped away by Russia.

Last summer, Mr. Nikulin was wounded in the back by missile shrapnel while rescuing people after a Russian strike in Pokrovsk, near Myrnohrad. Despite the injury, Mr. Nikulin continued working, occasionally traveling to Kyiv to undergo three surgeries that removed the shrapnel.

Despite witnessing so many cities and towns fall to Russia, Mr. Nikulin has maintained his optimism. He says that while the first phase of the war, from 2014 to 2022, turned into a frozen conflict, complicating Ukraine’s efforts to reclaim lost territory, the full-scale war that began nearly three years ago presents an opportunity for Ukraine to regain its land.

“I know, it sounds so strange,” he said of his optimism. But he recalled how that same upbeat belief had driven him during the seemingly doomed escape from Mariupol in 2022. “Hope was our power.”

For now, however, Mr. Nikulin continues to retreat.

When Moscow’s forces launched a new offensive toward Myrnohrad this summer, he was forced to move again, this time leaving an apartment belonging to his wife’s family. He recorded a video of his departure in mid-August.

“Home sweet home,” he says in English in the video, before walking through corridors adorned with floral wallpaper and past a kitchen table strewn with apples, a kettle and salad bowls. His heavy breath is audible, betraying his deep emotion.

He concludes, “I don’t want to say goodbye.”

Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contributed reporting.