If you drive to Bakhmut, a city in the contested Donbass region, you will see thick white smoke rising in the sky.

The fighting in this Ukrainian-controlled city is not over.

Because while Russian troops have retreated in the north-east of the region, they are still on the offensive here.

The smoke, visible from miles away, comes from a five-storey block of flats hit by strikes overnight.

Firefighters at the scene were still working to put out the blaze while also digging through the rubble in search of bodies.

There has already been at least one confirmed death.

“People are lying under the rubble,” said an elderly resident, still in shock. “And here I am, somehow still alive.”

The 78-year-old, who declined to be named, told how he had to be rescued from his apartment when a destroyed staircase blocked his door.

“I heard a sound like thunder, there was a lot of glass broken,” he recalled.

The facade of the destroyed building had collapsed completely.

“I have no more windows, no more doors,” he said. “Everything is destroyed.”

Explosions like this “happens every day,” Valeriy said.

“They can come from anywhere, usually at night,” the 62-year-old told AFP.

For him, simple physics showed that the blow must have come from the Russians: the damage from the blow came from the side their troops were stationed on, he argued.

“It’s definitely coming from Ukrainians,” said one woman, pointing to Ukrainian artillery positions.

Pro-Russian sentiment persists in the Donbass region.

The Ukrainian Presidency says the Donetsk region in the Donbass has been repeatedly shelled by Russians: in the last 24 hours not only Bakhmut but also Toretsk, Mykolaivka, Avdiivka, Krasnogorivka, Myrnograd and Khasiv Yar have been hit.

In downtown Bakhmut, blackouts have plunged the last functioning grocery store into darkness.

That’s why its owner had set up a small table in front of his shop, on which he spread out his goods for the few people who were still there: canned goods, bread and batteries.

Local people hardly pay any attention to the whistling mortar shells that land with deafening explosions.

A small group of residents were busy filling water jars at fire hydrants, as there was no other source of running water in the city.

And while they can sometimes still pick up a phone signal, there was no electricity either, so people used generators to charge their phones.

On a bench next to the grocery store, 77-year-old Soviet Army veteran Valentyn Zagudaylo was selling milk.

The veteran now owns a herd of 35 cows on a farm in a nearby village.

Every day he drives his motorbike to Bakhmut to ensure milk is delivered to the local people.

“The task of the Ukrainian authorities is to demolish the city so that the residents leave,” said Zagudaylo.

But he added: “I don’t want Russia here.”

Valeriy Mamaltyrev, meanwhile, complained about the delays in humanitarian aid.

“We have no light, no electricity, the garbage is piling up…” he said. But the main problem, he added, is the lack of firewood.

After all, the 70-year-old had found a bouquet of flowers.

He was getting ready, he said, to give to his mistress.