(2 Feb 2022) In the mining village of Trudovskikh, near the frontline of rebel-controlled Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, nine people have been living in a bomb shelter for years.
Having lost their homes to artillery bombardments, the residents of the shelter have been staying there between two and eight years.
Life becomes especially tough in the winter, with the inhabitants are having to wear warm clothes even inside.
"When will it be over? No one knows," said one of the longer-staying shelter residents. "Just think about it: it's the eighth year of us living here."
Some of them can't even access social benefits, because they lost documents to house fires, with some only surviving thanks to volunteer help and the Red Cross.
As tensions once more rise between Ukraine, Western allies and Russia over fears of another potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, shelter resident Vyacheslav firmly believes more violence is the solution.
"Let them know what it's like sleeping in cellars. Let them know what it's like when kids can't go to school, hiding in bomb shelters, knowing where every shell is flying from," he said. "Put a scare on them so that they find out the hard way."
Others in the shelter say they just hope for a secession of hostilities so that people can go out and "stop being afraid".
Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014 following the ouster of the country's Moscow-friendly president and later threw its weight behind rebels in Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland, triggering a conflict that has killed over 14,000 people.
Armed rebels in the mostly Russian-speaking eastern region seized government buildings and proclaimed "people's republics" in the Donetsk and the Luhansk regions, and the Ukrainian military and volunteer battalions moved to put down the unrest.
Ukraine and the West said Russia sent troops and weapons to the east to support the separatists. Moscow has denied those claims and insisted that Russians fighting alongside the rebels went there on their own.
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