The Russian war against Ukraine has entered its sixth month, and in the eastern Donbas region – scene to some of the heaviest fighting – the missiles are still falling.
On Sunday morning it was school number six in the city of Kostiantynivka, 30km from the frontline. Two rockets made huge craters flush against a three-storey building that was gutted by the blast.
In her fifth-floor flat about 100 metres away, Tamara, 85, was awake and boiling potatoes at 4.30am when the rockets struck.
“I sleep in my clothes so I can get out quickly if there is an airstrike,” the former nurse explained as she walked past the site a few hours later, walking her dogs on the way to collect water.
“The explosion shook my flat. I can’t describe the noise. It was insane. It was like an earthquake. I’m so scared,” she said, close to tears. “I hate it! I hate it! I just want this war to end.”
Although people living in Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk, Sloviansk – all visited by the Guardian on Sunday – said the intensity of the shelling had diminished in the last two weeks, the violence continues and the sound of shelling and rocket fire was audible in the distance.
On the northern outskirts of Sloviansk, the closest of the three cities to the frontline, Olga was shaking apricots out of a tree on a country lane to collect in a shopping bag.
Not far from where she was gathering the fruit, the sound of outgoing fire from a Ukrainian gun could be heard, hidden among the trees.
“The last few days have been more quiet,” said the 55-year-old, who like Tamara was too scared to give her surname. “I have been here since the first day of the war. It has been like hell. I don’t understand why Russia attacked Ukraine.”
The cities, all in Donetsk province, are seen as key targets in the attempt by Russian forces to occupy all of the Donbas region, which encompasses Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk. Few here imagined that the war that began on 24 February would drag on this long. Many see little prospect of an end being in sight and are fearful of what winter will bring.
Confirming the anecdotal evidence of residents, satellite imaging by Nasa of fires burning along the frontline suggests that Russian artillery shelling has recently diminished. Some analysts suggest that this may be the result of Ukrainian strikes – using newly supplied western artillery systems – on ammunition dumps and command posts, which have degraded Russian capabilities.
Still residents are not yet willing to believe that it is more than a temporary respite.
Before the war, Mykola Pushkaruk, 43, was a children’s football coach in Kramatorsk. With the schools shut he has no children to coach, although he still plays football every evening with men from the town.
“There’s no water. No ice and I can’t afford vodka. And vodka is the only thing that helps me get through this,” Zukerman said.