The dangers in Slovyansk are clear from the start.
“If I say run, you run,” Tetiana tells us. She and her colleague Yasha are escorting us into a city now under constant bombardment from Russian drones, missiles and glide bombs.
It is raining and cloudy as we enter the city, and our military escorts call this “good” weather, meaning it is bad for drones.
But the threat is still there, and Yasha keeps his eyes peeled on the skies, while 21-year-old Tetiana scours her phone for the latest military intelligence on likely threats from the air.
Slovyansk is one of four cities that make up Ukraine’s “fortress belt” – a system of heavily reinforced defence lines in the parts of eastern region of Donetsk still under its control.
Russia wants Kyiv to give up the fortress cities and they are central to talks on a possible peace deal that have resumed after nine months between Ukraine, Russia and the US in Abu Dhabi.
Ukrainians worry that doing so would make it much easier for Russia to advance further west, including to the capital Kyiv.
BBC/Moose CampbellOnce inside the city, we leave our vehicles hidden under the cover of trees and venture out on foot. Yasha carries a shotgun – a last resort to shoot down Russian drones. In halting English, Tetiana tells us walking is safer than travelling by car.
Abandoned vehicles litter the streets – recently destroyed by remotely operated Russian first-person view drones. The anti-drone netting that covers the roads is no guarantee of safety.
Tetiana shows us a video on her phone taken a few days earlier.
You can hear several drones buzzing above her, and then the cacophony of small arms fire as Ukrainian forces try to shoot them down. Tetiana admits it can be scary but explains how she felt compelled to help her country, abandoning her dreams of becoming an opera singer.
Slovyansk is now a husk of its former self. Very few buildings have been left unscathed, with many reduced to rubble.
Tetiana shows us a school recently destroyed by Russian glide bombs. Across the road there is a gaping hole in an abandoned residential block. Broken glass litters the pavement. The few shops still functioning are boarded up – making it hard to distinguish what is still open. Most have closed.
Tetiana says the Russians are doing everything they can to intimidate people and drive them out of the city. That, she says, “is their strategy – to make people leave in chaos, gathering up their last belongings and fleeing amid enormous fear and suffering. They want people to have nowhere left to live”.
It is a familiar pattern already seen in other Ukrainian towns and cities in the Donbas – like Pokrovsk and Bakhmut. These are now ghost towns reduced to rubble, but eventually falling into Russian hands.
Russia has already taken nearly 90% of the Donbas – made up of the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk – but its advances this year have all but stalled in the face of strong Ukrainian resistance.
The White House is sounding positive about the revived talks in Abu Dhabi, despite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s refusal to cede the territory.
October was the deadliest month for Russian troops since the start of its full-scale invasion – with more than 54,000 killed or injured, according to Ukraine’s general staff. Despite this, Russian forces are still making life in the Fortress Belt cities almost impossible.
BBC/Moose CampbellBefore the war, Slovyansk was a city of more than 200,000 people. Less than 10% of those remain and the population diminishes by the day.
But amid the wail of near constant air raid warnings, there are still signs of people clinging on to life here. Iryna works in one of the city’s last remaining coffee shops. Slovyansk is where she was born.
“I’m forced to walk around crying,” she tells me. “How can they do this?”
Life, she says, has become incredibly difficult. She has already lost her house. But despite her tears, there is still defiance: “I won’t leave Slovyansk. This is my home.”
Inga, 53, was also born and raised here and continues to work in the city despite the danger.
“It’s stressful. Honestly, I don’t even know what to say,” she says, but she is staying because of what she calls the “fear of the unknown”.
“I simply have nowhere to go, and I don’t have the money to leave or support myself afterwards.” Nor, she says, is there anywhere else in Ukraine she would consider truly safe.
BBC/Moose CampbellWe first met the Omega National Guard Special Forces drone unit two years ago fighting in the Kharkiv region, in north-eastern Ukraine.
Just four of the original team remain – the rest have moved to other units, or they have been wounded or killed.
Among the dead was the brother of the man in charge of the unit, Oleksandr, who now describes his unit as his family.
He jokes it is just like the Peaky Blinders TV show – “but without the crime and the drugs”. Back at their base they share a meal every evening.
Oleksandr reads out a prayer of thanks for surviving another day – he says it strengthens their spirits. The meal is accompanied by classical music played on a speaker. It helps drown out the noise of the explosions nearby.
“I feel this is the most difficult situation we’ve ever faced,” says Oleksandr, who underlines the importance of holding the line.
“We must be here to inflict maximum damage on the enemy. We’re fighting here because this is where the most intense phase of the war is taking place. Russia’s claim that they will reach the borders of the Donbas, seize it, and then the war will end is absolutely false,” he insists.
The remaining fortress belt cities provide Ukraine with a strong defensive line and are a major obstacle to any Russian advance. The saturation of drones in the area is also now making it nigh-on impossible for either side to advance here.
Peace talks may have resumed, but Oleksandr notes they have not led to anything so far.
“I really want this war to end,” he says, “but do I believe these negotiations will succeed? No, I don’t really believe they will”.
EPAThe next morning we are not the only ones making an exit. A dozen civilians have arrived at an evacuation point in the centre to be escorted out.
They hold all the belongings they can carry and are taken into a bunker for their safety. Outside there is another heavy blast of small arms fire, signalling more drones are nearby.
Alina Shyrko, herself a resident of Slovyansk, is co-ordinating the move of civilians out of the city and says the situation has deteriorated rapidly over the past few months. Families with children have already been ordered to leave.
“Everyone is thinking about leaving,” she says, “I’m thinking about it too.”
Ukraine still holds Slovyansk but its lifeblood, its people, are ebbing away.
Additional reporting by Rebecca Hartmann and Volodymyr Lozhko.
