From the roof of the apartment block where Olga and Yura live when they are in Avdiivka, the badlands of eastern Ukraine spread out before them.
Closest is an industrial area where, with the rattle and thump of Kalashnikov and mortar fire, government troops and militants fight at close quarters; beyond are the high-rises of the separatists’ capital, Donetsk, and a gap in the skyline where the city’s now-ruined airport once stood.
Many of the apartment building’s windows have been shattered during two years of sporadic shelling in Avdiivka, but inside, handwritten signs taped to the doors of several flats carry the same message: “People are living here!”
Residents now share the block with volunteers who are helping Ukraine’s army, and a priest called Fr Stefan who has turned one flat into a chapel, as well as with soldiers who are receiving treatment or resting.
When Olga is not volunteering as a paramedic on the frontline, she is a journalist and translator; when Yura is not driving Olga and wounded soldiers between the battlefield and local hospitals, he works as an engineer.
They risk their lives to help Ukraine hold the line against Russian-backed separatists, but are well aware that many of their neighbours are ambivalent, or even hostile, towards their efforts.
“Most people here watch Russian and separatist television, and all they get is anti-Ukrainian information,” said Yura.
Kremlin messages
Along a swathe of Kiev-controlled territory bordering the militants’ so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR), the strongest television signals come from the east, beaming the Kremlin’s message into people’s homes.
For two years, Moscow has told them that Kiev has been seized by “fascists” who, with support from the United States, European Union and Nato, are wreaking bloody havoc in eastern Ukraine to punish people for their close ties to Russia.
“This all started on Maidan,” said Yelena, a resident of Avdiivka, referring to the Kiev square that was the heart of Ukraine’s 2014 pro-western revolution.
“They should have thought about what they were doing, before they did what they did there,” she added, as she walked with her friend, Valentina.
“Ukraine’s leaders should solve this problem – Donetsk is also Ukraine, isn’t it?” said Valentina, brushing off questions about the culpability of Russian president Vladimir Putin and the separatists he supports.
“It doesn’t matter whether you call this Ukraine or something else,” Yelena said.
“What is important is that people here live together, in peace.”
After Crimea, which the Kremlin annexed in March 2014, Donetsk and Luhansk were always two of the most pro-Russian regions in Ukraine.
They went through rapid depopulation and repopulation during a brutal cycle of famine, war and industrialisation from the 1930s to the 1950s, which hit the ethnic-Ukrainian population hard and prompted the arrival of millions of Russians.
Coal-rich Donbas
The factories that were built in these coal-rich regions, which are known collectively as the Donbas, sent most of what they produced to Russia.
This continued after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when rising unemployment and poverty across Ukraine fuelled a particularly strong nostalgia in the east for the days of guaranteed jobs, pensions and massive Kremlin subsidies.
Moscow cut many economic ties with Ukraine following its 2014 pivot to the West, leaving heavy industry across the country looking for new customers, and dealing an especially hard blow to the Donbas as armed conflict erupted.
Even as Russian arms, fighters, advisers and money transformed a previously tiny local separatist movement into the DNR and LNR, Moscow’s leaders blamed Kiev, Washington and Brussels for the chaos, and its media terrified people in Crimea and Donbas with false tales of Ukrainian atrocities.
“It’s too late to change people’s minds with counter-propaganda here,” said Yura.
“Even my relatives think I’m being paid by the US state department.”
The Kremlin complains of rampant “Russophobia” in Ukraine, but there is no sign of it on the frontline: Yura – like many soldiers – speaks Russian, while Olga prefers to speak Ukrainian and, like most of their 45 million compatriots, they understand both languages easily.
“‘Stability’ – people here just want stability,” said Yura.
Fear of change
It is a word which, since the Maidan protests, has become a mantra for people fearful of change in a country that desperately needs it.
The last major political upheaval in Ukraine was the pro-western 2004 Orange Revolution, which ended in dismal failure; before that it was the demise of the Soviet Union, which brought little or no benefit to the average worker in Donbas.
Here, many people believe change can only be for the worse.
Civil society in Donbas has always been weak, political apathy strong, and power carved up by “bosses” like ex-president Viktor Yanukovich and billionaire Rinat Akhmetov – both local men.
"Before we lived together – we are surzhyki here – but now we are split," said Lyuba (57), using a name for a mixture of the Ukrainian and Russian languages.
She runs a tiny shop in Mariinka, another frontline town that is often shelled.
“Emotionally I feel better on that side, but financially I feel better here,” said her friend Irina (53).
“There’s more life in Donetsk, but things are much cheaper here.”
Outside the shop, men drink beer on a Sunday morning and dogs, perhaps maddened by nightly artillery fire, chase and nip each other in the potholed street.
Passports and pensions
“Listen. Lots of people here thought it would be like Crimea, that everything would be over in a couple of weeks and we’d have Russian passports and pensions,” said Alexander (57), Lyuba’s husband.
“But why would Putin want this place, with its pensioners and alcoholics and problems? Now it’s clear that Russia doesn’t need us.”
