As Russian forces close in on Kurakhove, hundreds of residents remain in the front-line city

KURAKHOVE, Ukraine (AP) —

Set on Ukraine's eastern front, Kurakhove is surrounded on three sides, with Russian forces just under 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the devastated city center.

Yet between 700 and 1,000 local residents remain, most of them living in the basements of apartment buildings, without running water, heating or electricity. The only place to charge phones is in the basement of the building now housing the city administration.

The exact number of people is impossible to determine because, since mid-October, no humanitarian volunteers have come to Kurakhove.

Under attack from artillery, multiple rocket launchers, aerial bombs and drones, Kurakhove has become the new Bakhmut, as Russia continues its drive westward to capture all of the Donbas region. On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the situation in Kurakhove, as well as the key city of Pokrovsk, “the most challenging.”

The hospital, schools, kindergartens, water treatment plant, refugee center, post office, technical school and cultural center have all been destroyed. Smoke hangs in the air as bombed-out apartment buildings burn against a backdrop of artillery fire and drones.

Artillerymen of the 33rd Brigade say they are firing around 50 shells per day on the Kurakhove front, indicating critical activity in the Russian army’s offensive operations and the brigade's desperate attempts to stop Russian forces from encircling the city.

Local authorities remain in the city, as well as representatives of the police and local Territorial Defense Forces.

For Artem Shchus, head of police in Kurakhove, there is little hope of defending the city if it becomes surrounded.

“I don’t think it is possible, considering the reality of modern war and modern technologies. In that case, the logistics could be performed only by drones,” he says.

Shchus calls the road to Kurakhove, which is lined with burned-out civilian vehicles, the “road of death,” due to persistent Russian drone attacks. Five civilians have been killed while trying to leave.

No supplies would enter the city without the “White Angels” evacuation group, made up of local police officers and volunteers. They provide first aid to the wounded and remove the bodies of those killed in shelling, all while operating the city's only functioning food store.

The White Angels bring in vital supplies in an armored vehicle kitted out with electronic warfare equipment — the only way to enter the city, and still a journey fraught with risk.

“Without REB (jammers) it is just a lottery. With it, you might still have a chance to survive,” Shchus says.

The only way to escape the city is to travel with the White Angels. Each day, they risk their lives to evacuate between six and 12 people from different parts of the city and surrounding villages.

Although children are meant to have been evacuated, parents often hide them, both from the bombs and from law enforcement officers. Among the White Angels' key missions is to find children and persuade their parents to evacuate.

When this mission is successful and children are removed from the basements, many are shocked by the state of the destroyed city, suggesting that they have been hiding underground for quite some time.

After dressing the children in bulletproof vests and helmets, the White Angels take them to the nearby city of Kostiantynopil, from where other volunteers transport them to refugee registration points in the regional centers of Dnipro or Zaporizhzhia.

“We evacuate people every day without stopping. We just dropped people off in Kostiantynopil, and we still have addresses to go through today,” Shchus explains.

Asked about adapting to work in such challenging and dangerous conditions, the police chief worries about the impact on his team.

“I think everyone has already adapted. I wouldn’t even call it ‘adaptation.’ It's more like an unhealthy state of mind. I don’t know how this will influence them socially in the future,” he says. “These people are living in inhumane conditions, and they're surviving on adrenaline. The war is their life. These are hard conditions to work in, but everyone is working.”

Associated Press writers Yehor Konovalov in Kyiv and Elise Morton in London also contributed to this report.

A central streets covered in debris from destroyed residential buildings after Russian bombing in Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

A man rides on a bike in front of the mail office which was destroyed by a Russian airstrike in Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

A central streets covered in debris from destroyed residential buildings after Russian bombing in Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

Locals ride inside a van during en evacuation from Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

Pipa Vasyl, a policeman of the "White Angels" helps a local woman to sit down in an armoured van during en evacuation in Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

Pipa Vasyl, a policeman of the "White Angels", tries to convince a local woman to evacuate from Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

Pipa Vasyl, a policeman of the "White Angels" drives in an armoured minivan during en evacuation in Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

A multi-story building burns after a Russian strike on a residential neighbourhood in Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

A man walks on a street as he looks for food in Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

A man prays in front of an icon inside an Orthodox Church in Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

Katia, 11, with her grandmother and mother sit in an armoured minivan during en evacuation by the "White Angels" police unit in Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

Local men help en elderly woman to walk to a police minivan during en evacuation in Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

Artem Shchus, colonel of the Kurakhove police unit, left, sits in a basement in Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

A police department dameged after Russian shelling in Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

Pipa Vasyl, a policeman of the White Angels" unit gives water to a dog abandoned by its owners who left the town of Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

Local women unload food products from a minivan into the last shop operating in Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

A central streets covered in debris from destroyed residential buildings after Russian bombing in Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

A man rides on a bike in front of the mail office which was destroyed by a Russian airstrike in Kurakhove, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Anton Shtuka)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Nationwide protests in Iran sparked by the Islamic Republic's ailing economy are putting new pressure on its theocracy as it has shut down the internet and telephone networks.

Tehran is still reeling from a 12-day war launched by Israel in June that saw the United States bomb nuclear sites in Iran. Economic pressure, which has intensified since September when the United Nations reimposed sanctions on the country over its atomic program, has sent Iran's rial currency into a free fall, now trading at over 1.4 million to $1.

Meanwhile, Iran's self-described “Axis of Resistance” — a coalition of countries and militant groups backed by Tehran — has been decimated since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.

A threat by U.S. President Donald Trump warning Iran that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters” the U.S. “will come to their rescue," has taken on new meaning after American troops captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran.

“We're watching it very closely,” Trump said Sunday. “If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they're going to get hit very hard by the United States.”

Here's what to know about the protests and the challenges facing Iran's government.

More than 390 protests have taken place across all of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported Friday. The death toll had reached at least 42, it added, with more than 2,270 arrests. The group relies on an activist network inside of Iran for its reporting and has been accurate in past unrest.

Understanding the scale of the protests has been difficult. Iranian state media has provided little information about the demonstrations. Online videos offer only brief, shaky glimpses of people in the streets or the sound of gunfire. Journalists in general in Iran also face limits on reporting such as requiring permission to travel around the country, as well as the threat of harassment or arrest by authorities. The internet shutdown has further complicated the situation.

But the protests do not appear to be stopping, even after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said “rioters must be put in their place.”

The collapse of the rial has led to a widening economic crisis in Iran. Prices are up on meat, rice and other staples of the Iranian dinner table. The nation has been struggling with an annual inflation rate of some 40%.

In December, Iran introduced a new pricing tier for its nationally subsidized gasoline, raising the price of some of the world’s cheapest gas and further pressuring the population. Tehran may seek steeper price increases in the future, as the government now will review prices every three months. Meanwhile, food prizes are expected to spike after Iran’s Central Bank in recent days ended a preferential, subsidized dollar-rial exchange rate for all products except medicine and wheat.

The protests began in late December with merchants in Tehran before spreading. While initially focused on economic issues, the demonstrations soon saw protesters chanting anti-government statements as well. Anger has been simmering over the years, particularly after the 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody that triggered nationwide demonstrations.

Iran's “Axis of Resistance," which grew in prominence in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, is reeling.

Israel has crushed Hamas in the devastating war in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group in Lebanon, has seen its top leadership killed by Israel and has been struggling since. A lightning offensive in December 2024 overthrew Iran’s longtime stalwart ally and client in Syria, President Bashar Assad, after years of war there. Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels also have been pounded by Israeli and U.S. airstrikes.

China meanwhile has remained a major buyer of Iranian crude oil, but hasn't provided overt military support. Neither has Russia, which has relied on Iranian drones in its war on Ukraine.

Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials have increasingly threatened to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran had been enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels prior to the U.S. attack in June, making it the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.

Tehran also increasingly cut back its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, as tensions increased over its nuclear program in recent years. The IAEA's director-general has warned Iran could build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program.

U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”

Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. But there's been no significant talks in the months since the June war.

Iran decades ago was one of the United States’ top allies in the Mideast under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.

But in January 1979, the shah fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. Then came the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which created Iran’s theocratic government.

Later that year, university students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. severed.

During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein. During that conflict, the U.S. launched a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea as part of the so-called “Tanker War,” and later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the U.S. military said it mistook for a warplane.

Iran and the U.S. have seesawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since. Relations peaked with the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Iran greatly limit its program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Mideast that intensified after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

FILE -A student looks at Iran's domestically built centrifuges in an exhibition of the country's nuclear achievements, in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - An Iranian security official in protective clothing walks through part of the Uranium Conversion Facility just outside the Iranian city of Isfahan, on March 30, 2005. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - A customer shops at a supermarket at a shopping mall in northern Tehran, on Sept. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - Current and pre-revolution Iranian banknotes are displayed by a street money exchanger at Ferdowsi square, Tehran's go-to venue for foreign currency exchange, in downtown Tehran, Iran, on Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - People cross the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) street in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

FILE - Protesters march on a bridge in Tehran, Iran, on Dec. 29, 2025. (Fars News Agency via AP, File)

People wave national flags during a ceremony commemorating the death anniversary of the late commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)