From the hills to the west, the Ukrainian army is shelling Russian positions. Russian troops return fire from the east.

Right in the middle are the last residents of the city of Siwersk.

Located in a part of Donbass still under Ukrainian control, the city had a population of around 11,000 before Russia invaded in February.

Now there are only 2,000 – most of them elderly people with nowhere to go.

They live under constant fire since the Russian army approached after capturing the nearby town of Lysychansk.

“I live in this madness. We constantly walk the line between life and death,” said Alla, 55, who declined to give her last name.

On the street in front of her house, Alla spoke for her neighbors – about a dozen people around her nodded in agreement.

“We live in the basement. We don’t get any humanitarian aid. We are afraid to go into the garden. We have no crops, no electricity, no water,” she said.

“Psychologically, living with constant explosions day and night is very difficult… We don’t know where they’re going to hit,” she said.

As she spoke, several explosions could be heard in the background – outgoing fire from Ukrainian positions, which was quickly answered by the Russian side.

A neighbor, Viktor Markov, 55, showed AFP a rocket that had recently fallen on a vacant house in the neighborhood.

The rocket, at least three meters long, penetrated the roof and drilled into the basement, but did not detonate.

“I was in the Soviet Army. I’ve been to a few hotspots, but I’ve never seen anything like it,” Markov said, adding that he could never find out if the shelling was Russian or Ukrainian.

“It makes me nervous,” he said, close to tears.

“I was born in Ukraine and will die in Ukraine. We’re not against anyone, we’re not against the government,” he said.

In another part of the city, where the Ukrainian and Russian lines are closer together, every other house was completely destroyed.

Tetiana Deinega, 90, who lives in one of the remaining houses, was picking herbs in front of her house – unaware of the shelling.

Most of the windows in the house were blown out.

Deinga said she is waiting for her children, who live in Russia, to come and find her.

“If you can come, I’ll go. I don’t go anywhere without them,” she said.

Deinga said she was not lonely and was cared for by other people in the neighborhood.

If her children don’t come, she said she would stay.

“We believe this is Ukraine, our homeland. Good or bad, it’s ours,” she said.

When asked about the dangers of staying, she replied, “Maybe I’ll go to bed tonight and not wake up tomorrow.”

About 15 kilometers away, in the small village of Kalenyky, things were quieter, although the front line is still nearby.

Valentyna, 72, said she lives without electricity but has a well for water.

The village is intact, but fear reigns.

“I don’t see a great future. We won’t be able to think about the future until this is all over,” she said.