Early that morning they had packed their belongings into two bags and left the room they were renting in a shared flat in Sloviansk. Volunteers drove them to the only functioning regional station, Pokrovsk, where they boarded the daily evacuation train. Svitlana walks next to the crater left by a shell in Sloviansk on July 13. Photo: Anastasia Vlasova/The Guardian It was the second time they ran away from the war. In 2014 they had fled their home in Horlivka after Russian forces occupied the town. Svitlana’s husband had been killed by shrapnel and she said the new authorities refused to compensate her, listing his death as a heart attack. They had been told they would be given tokens on the train which they could exchange in Dnipro for relocation money – £60 for Svitlana and £120 for Danylo. But for some reason the people in their carriage did not receive their tokens. They were met by a group of Pentecostal churchgoers in Dnipro, who took them to a shelter that was converted into a Pentecostal house of prayer. But it became clear that night that Svitlana was expected to leave the church after a few nights. Svitlana and Danylo with their backs to the camera as they registered at a displaced persons shelter at Light of the Gospel church in Dnipro. Photo: Anastasia Taylor-Lind/The Guardian “Here they want £300 for a room, it’s just completely unrealistic,” she said, referring to rental prices in Dnipro. “If I had more time, then I could get a job, but we’ll be down in the dumps. I know people who waited three months for their displaced person (benefits).” Even when Ukrainians are able to leave cities under bombardment, a lack of money and financial support sends many back. “We have no relatives,” said Svitlana, and in this world, everything is about money. The next day they were given a lift back to Sloviansk, first by volunteers who dropped them off in another town, Kramatorsk, and then by Ukrainian soldiers who picked them up on the side of the highway. Svitlana and her son Danylo in Sloviansk on July 13. Photo: Anastasia Vlasova/The Guardian Over the last week and a half conditions in Sloviansk have deteriorated significantly. Since July 4, Svitlana and Danylo have been living in a basement of an old factory next to their house, which is reinforced with steel bars. Svitlana said they only managed to go out four times in the past 10 days. The basement is damp, there’s no phone signal, and all of Danylo’s neighborhood friends are gone. He is the last child in the housing club where they live. About 20,000 people remain in the city, a drop of more than 80 percent since the spring, when the city’s mayor urged residents to leave as Russia began to advance on the remaining Ukrainian-controlled areas of Donbas, the collective name for Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. Svitlana’s remaining neighbors – about a dozen out of hundreds – also blamed a combination of temporary housing elsewhere and a lack of work for her not leaving. “Where to go;” said Svitlana. “If they gave me a house, fine. But after a month, I will be on the streets. I prefer to stay here where I know people. Who will help in Lviv?’ There has been no running water in Sloviansk for over six weeks and no gas for even longer, Svitlana and her neighbors say. The electricity supply can come and go, meaning they sometimes use makeshift grills they’ve built outside their building instead of their stoves. There are only a few food shops still open and hardly any business to speak of. Svitlana and her neighbor change the blankets on a bed. Photo: Anastasia Vlasova/The Guardian Svitlana has not received a salary since the shop where she worked was closed due to the war. Their neighbor Natalya, who worked at the local psychiatric hospital, said her state wage dropped from £180 to around £50 a month in March and was cut entirely in May. The front line is now just 10 kilometers from Sloviansk, said to be Russia’s next big sightseeing city. Since the beginning of July, the city has experienced days where the shelling was continuous, Svitlana said. In one case the market was hit. Footage of the immediate aftermath shows locals and soldiers pulling bodies from the burning stables. Successful Ukrainian strikes last week on Russian ammunition depots appear to have slowed the bombing. But the Washington-based thinktank, the Institute for the Study of War, estimates that the Russians will likely launch a larger-scale and more decisive attack on Sloviansk soon. Shortly after they returned from Dnipro, a farmer north of Sloviansk, next to the front line, offered them 5 pounds for a day of cherry picking. Svitlana, Danylo and her neighbors went to his truck, but said they had to hit the floor twice as fighter jets and missiles flew over the orchard from the Russian side. “We all gather here and put what we can for meals – one person has a carrot, another has some rice,” Svitlana said. “What I don’t understand is that all this money is coming from the West, but no one is coming here, except for the council workers who bring water.”
