The dozen nervous and battle-weary Ukrainian soldiers huddled together under a bridge on Saturday to avoid Russian shellfire, form the last line of defense against the Russian offensive in Severodonetsk, the city held by Kyiv the most easterly of the country.
Behind them, the smoldering remains of what was a pre-war industrial city of 100,000 inhabitants, with its countless Soviet-era buildings and large chemical factory.
Their eyes are trained on a field, on the other side of the bridge, from where the Russians have fired missiles all night at the last Ukrainian defenses.
The capture of Severodonetsk by the Russian army would mean de facto that troops from Moscow control the Lugansk region, the smaller of the two pro-Russian breakaway republics, on the eve of commemorations in Russia on May 9.
In an underground passage on the northern outskirts of Severodonetsk, heavily armed soldiers anxiously shout orders into their walkie-talkies, next to a charred van.
Anti-tank missiles are placed there, next to a kettle, whose hot water fills the thermos of the soldiers.
They are too tired to look brave.
“I prefer not to estimate how long we can still hold out. All I can say is that we are still here,” said a Ukrainian commander, who preferred to remain anonymous.
“Best way to describe the situation? Critically stable,” he said with a sardonic laugh.
– Cut off from the world –
A clear pattern emerged on Ukraine’s eastern front, during the third month of the Russian invasion.
On the one hand, the Ukrainian units counter-attacked and progressed east of the great city of Kharkiv. On the other, the Russians are gradually nibbling ground about 150 km southeast of the Ukrainian advance.
In other words, the two armies are converging for a battle that could determine if the Russians are able to take the strategic city of Kramatorsk.
The front lines move through open fields and valleys dotted with industrial towns and smaller rural settlements now virtually cut off from the world.
Severodonetsk has been transformed into a lunar landscape, with its roads filled with craters and charred buildings.
Some residents have tried to brave the fighting to try to repair the broken power lines, by climbing on the wooden poles.
“We have had no electricity or water for two weeks,” said Guennadiï Lastovets, a welder, while waiting for a car to evacuate his 81-year-old father.
“But honestly, I have no idea how the war is going,” adds the 55-year-old. “Rumors are circulating, but we no longer have access to the Internet, no more telephone connection”.
– Lost hope –
All Galina Abdourachikova knows is that she is still alive after crawling barefoot through her missile-hit apartment before spending the next five days alone in an abandoned car.
Enough to make this 65-year-old lady lose hope.
“I have nothing to eat or drink. I had a bottle of water with me, but not anymore. My mouth is dry,” she whispers.
His damaged Lada was the only vehicle still present on the main street which crosses an industrial zone from which neither soldiers nor civilians seemed to want to leave.
“I’m not scared of anything anymore,” she says of the loud bangs heard in various parts of town as she speaks.
“At first I was afraid that these things would kill me. But now I’m not afraid anymore. If it hits me, it hits me.”
– “They left” –
The city is currently run by a civil-military administration that operates from a building that before the war housed more than half a dozen American and European humanitarian organizations.
But the aid workers were forced to leave the city, having been ordered to do so by their respective governments before the start of the Russian invasion on February 24.
The only ones left, including a few Europeans, feel abandoned and betrayed.
“They left without ever looking back,” laments British humanitarian Philip Ivlev-York, pointing to the former office of a European organization.
The head of the municipal administration, Oleksandre Strioup, is busy in the basement leafing through papers to determine where to send the available food. As a volley of defensive fire from a fortified position in front of the building forces him to look up.
“The situation is tense because the attacks are more and more frequent,” he analyzes.
“They are trying to take the city. But we are defending it.”