About 70% of the staff of this hospital have already fled – left Ukraine or headed west to a relatively safe place, away from the front line. The children of Valentina and Arkady Hlushchenko begged them to do the same — run away, quit their jobs, “stay alive.” But even as the Russian military closes in, and their positions are now about seven miles from this eastern Ukrainian city, the two doctors refuse to flee. This is stated in a special report of The Washington Post , Foreign Ukraine reports .

“If the general escapes from the hospital, what will happen to the army? I have to help people. It doesn’t matter if they are military or civilian. It doesn’t matter their gender, faith or status,” says Arkady.

The Hlushchenkos are among the small number of civilians who wish to remain in this enclave in eastern Ukraine, where the threat of a Russian takeover is looming ever closer.

Over the past few weeks, Russian forces have made major territorial gains, pushing Ukrainian soldiers from key positions and using artillery to destroy infrastructure in small towns along the way.

There are street fights in Severodonetsk. Other nearby towns, including Lysychansk and Bakhmut, were heavily shelled. Russian forces have also targeted Slovyansk, a city that pro-Russian militants briefly controlled during the 2014 Donbas offensive. By then, they had infiltrated the hospital, eventually using part of it as their base as Ukrainian doctors tried to use the facility to treat many wounded civilians.

When the Russian soldiers were finally pushed out by Ukrainian troops, the building was in chaos.

“The door was broken, and there was dirt everywhere,” Arkady recalls.

This time, with the city still in Ukrainian hands, the remaining hospital staff avoid thinking about the worst-case scenario and instead focus entirely on the task at hand.