Inside a city torn apart by war – where even those who live together are turning against one another

Restless nights and fearful days

We hunker down in what’s deemed a comparatively safe location with a group of others, doors locked.

We have a police guard of two and try to sleep. It’s incredibly difficult to estimate the number of residents who are still doing this every night (but without the police guard). The city authorities and volunteers believe it could be many thousands.

There are a few incoming missiles overnight, but everyone wakes early.

People are outside the aid hub with their bags shortly after first light, hoping there’s an evacuation trip to speed them away from all this. The dawn chorus here is a cacophony of rocket shelling and incoming missiles, and everyone’s assessment is the Russians are making inroads and getting closer. 
  
Seventy-year-old Valeriy takes us with him as he wheels his bike back home. He regularly makes aid drops using his bike, with his 65-year-old wife, Nela.

When we arrive at his flat, there are a few fellow pensioners gathered outside, taking advantage of the sun despite the ongoing sounds of war in the background. The explosions are just a few streets away.

One of his neighbours is a 75-year-old woman called Matvienko. She is wearing a headscarf and heavy coat despite the warm weather outside, probably because of the grim cold of the shelter she’s just emerged from.

She tells us she’s lived here since 1968. “We just want the war to end,” she says. “But right now, we have no life. We don’t sleep, and we don’t eat well.” 
  
Our arrival has attracted attention as residents try to quickly cook food early. Several shout at us to leave: “You come here, and the rockets follow.”

Several missiles whistle over us and everyone runs into the nearby doorway. Yelena tells us: “Every day it’s like this… We have to walk two kilometres to get water, and we get shelled.” 
  
Valeriy has stayed outside. “Go inside,” he tells us. “I’m used to this.” But while we’re inside the doorway, another of his neighbours has been remonstrating with him for talking to British foreigners who are also journalists.

There’s a stand-off between the two elderly men, and Valerie comes off worst. We turn to see him knocked back on the ground after being punched by his neighbour.

This is war – killing, maiming, and dividing communities and turning pensioner against pensioner. 
  
Maria and Ivan are representative of a lot of people still holding out here.

Ivan cries repeatedly, telling us as head of the choir in Severodonetsk they weren’t allowed to sing in Russian.

He cries again when I ask him if he prefers Severodonetsk to be Russian or Ukrainian. “We just want things the way they were,” he says helplessly.

Maria tells us their grown-up children left the city a while ago, and one has settled in Russian-controlled territory in Luhansk in the Donbas with his young family. “They were told to leave,” she says, and shows us a crater caused by a rocket landing just outside their home.

“I told my children, we will wait here for you to return,” she sobs, knowing the chances of that happening anytime soon is remote. 

The skyline of Severodonetsk is thick with clouds caused by bombs falling as we look down on it from a hilltop in nearby Lysychansk.

It is taking a terrible hammering – explosive blows to its very heart. It’s hard to see how it can survive this onslaught for much longer.