While the world focuses on the struggle between the Russian invaders and the exhausted Ukrainian defenders for control of Bakhmut, another silent but equally deadly struggle is at play in the villages surrounding the city. Photo essay by war photographer Paul Conroy.
Elderly residents, whose villages now resemble military garrisons rather than the once idyllic homes they once were, are refusing to abandon their homes, leaving them directly in the path of a Russian advance should Bakmuht fall.
With little fresh water, food, or electricity, they depend on food supplies brought in by volunteers, but as the military situation deteriorates, their chances of survival diminish accordingly.
Local villagers have established a food parcel distribution center in the ruins of an overgrown house, and daily deliveries of parcels see the elderly and infirm limp to the house, collect their parcels, and then struggle any which way they can back to their homes.
Once the parcel van leaves, the streets are eerily deserted, and the only sounds are of soldiers shifting weapons and supplies in preparation for what is inevitably to follow.
Further on from the villages is a Ukrainian artillery unit, dug in deep and camouflaged from the Russian drones that scour the land for targets.
When it happens, it happens quickly. A message is relayed from the bunker, and the self-propelled gun becomes a hive of activity. Within a minute, a three-round salvo is dispatched at Russian forces closing in on Bakhmut, and then an unsettling silence falls on the gun position.
Weaving our way back to Kramatorsk, the constant shellfire is a reminder that what passes for calm here is an illusion, an illusion that lasts only as long as the Russian guns remain out of range, and that could change any day now.
