Patriotic messages saying that “Bakhmut is Ukraine” are scrawled on monuments all over this city on the front lines.

But not everyone agrees that it should be.

The topic is discussed at the local market, where the few remaining residents of the city stock up on food and clothes for the winter to the sound of artillery.

One buyer, Yulia, said she believes Ukrainian troops bombed towns on the verge of being taken by Russia – echoing a conspiracy theory popular on social media.

“I don’t understand why Ukraine is destroying cities,” said the 46-year-old, who declined to give her last name for fear of reprisals for her views.

“I heard Ukraine is doing this to make sure Russia doesn’t get anything,” Julia said, exiting the market as the bombing neared.

She acknowledged that Russia was responsible for attacking her country but said it was now up to Ukrainians to lay down their arms to bring peace.

Bakhmut is located in the industrial Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed rebels started a conflict in 2014 and loyalties are often deeply divided.

Social media groups set up by residents in Bakhmut, which had a population of 70,000 before the war, contain posts criticizing the actions of the Ukrainian army but not actively supporting Russia.

In the nearby city of Kramatorsk, the main Telegram group used by local residents — “I Love Kramatorsk” — messages praising the Russian strikes in Kyiv can garner hundreds of likes as well as dozens of negative comments.

Lesya, 46, was selling cakes at a stall and said that before the war started she had a thriving textile business with 16 employees, some of whom were “separatists”.

“Some of them fled to Russia thinking they could come back here later” if Bakhmut falls, she said, adding that they were “drugged” by Russian state propaganda.

“I’m a normal Ukrainian with a son in the Ukrainian army,” Lesya said.

“But to them I’m a Banderovka” – a reference to the Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera, who fought alongside the Nazis against the Soviet Union in World War II.

Some Donbass residents accept or support the idea of ??Moscow taking power in hopes of an end to the conflict, or because of family ties in Russia, or because they identify with President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric about a “Russian world.”

In a devastated part of Bakhmut where many buildings have been gutted, neighbors charge their phones at a shop run by Oksana and Oleksandr, which has a generator.

One day, as the artillery battle raged outside between Russian and Ukrainian forces, the couple sat with two friends from the Russian-held city of Donetsk – 100 kilometers to the south – watching a Soviet-era film called “Mimino”.

“For me it’s not about knowing if I’m on the wrong side of the line or not,” Oksana said.

“It is the Ukrainian army that is on the wrong side of the line. We didn’t ask them anything and we certainly didn’t ask them to come and defend us.”