Just getting to Kostiantynivka, Ukraine, means risking your life. Gutted vehicles line the road, along with netting, now torn but meant to prevent drone attacks.

The whine of drones above is ever present. They are a lethal threat, making anything that moves a target, and Ukrainian soldiers try to shoot them down.

Humanitarian workers risk their lives trying to evacuate the last civilians living on the front lines.

Like other places along the front, Kostiantynivka is now a city in name only.

Its buildings are ruined and its people have mostly fled.

A City in the Kill Zone

The team carried lists of people who had signaled that they were ready, at last, to evacuate a place so ravaged by Russian bombardment that it had no power, gas, heat or running water, and little food or intact shelter.

The rescuers also called up to windows and balconies, shouting “evacuation,” as they tried to convince other stragglers, most of them old and infirm, that their lives here were finished, that they should grab their essentials and leave, too. They carried a disabled woman and her wheelchair to a waiting van.

Driving into Kostiantynivka “is like Russian roulette,” said Evgeny Tkachev, a worker with a U.N.-supported humanitarian group, Proliska. Rubble chokes the streets, which are pocked by craters, and drones are always overhead.

Kostiantynivka had about 67,000 residents before the war. By January, there were about 2,000. The city had become a prime target of the Russian offensive, a strategic node the Ukrainians were determined to defend.