The echo of artillery shells thundering in the distance mingles with the din of people gathered around Sloviansk's public water pumps.
Those sounds pierce the uneasy quiet that smothers the nearly deserted streets of this eastern Ukrainian city.
The members of Sloviansk's dwindling population only emerge — for a few minutes at a time — to fill up at the pumps that have been the city's only water source for more than two months.
Fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces near the key city in the Donetsk region has damaged vital infrastructure, leaving residents cut off from gas and water for months.
The water flows for now, but fears grow that, come winter, the city — which is only 12 kilometres from Russian-occupied territory — could face a humanitarian crisis once the pipes begin to freeze over.
"The water infrastructure was destroyed by the constant battles," says Lyubov Mahlii, a 76-year-old widow.
Twice a day, she gathers 20 litres of water from a public tank near her apartment, dragging the plastic bottles up four flights of stairs on her own.
"When there are bombings and sirens, we keep carrying it," she says.
"It's a great risk for us, but what can we do?"
Only a fifth of the city's pre-invasion population of 100,000 remains.
With heavy fighting raging nearby as Russian forces continue their push on Donetsk — part of the industrial Donbas region where Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian troops since 2014 — residents defy the shelling to make do with the only water source left.
And local officials believe things will only get worse once the cold sets in.
Locals fill their bottles with hand pumps or from plastic tanks at one of five public wells before hauling them home in bicycle baskets, wheeled carts and even children's strollers.
Following the death of her husband, Nikolai, from diabetes four years ago, Ms Mahlii shares her Soviet government-provided apartment with two bright yellow canaries and an assortment of house plants.
Water she gathered fills the plastic tubs and buckets stacked on every flat surface in her small bathroom, while empty plastic bottles line the walls in her hallway.
A meat and vegetable soup cooks on an electric burner for lunch.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a mandatory evacuation order to all residents of the Donetsk region at the end of July, saying remaining would cost lives.
Despite that — and the terror that accompanies the shriek of falling rockets near the city — and with no money to relocate and nowhere to go, Ms Mahlii plans to stay in Sloviansk, no matter what.
"I don't want to leave my apartment because someone else might occupy it," she says.
"I don't want to leave. I will die here."
Another Sloviansk resident, Ninel Kyslovska, 75, gathers water from a tank at a park for marinating cucumbers in the sun in the afternoon. She says the scarcity has up-ended all aspects of her life.
"Without water, you won't get anywhere. I have to carry 60, 80, 100 litres of water a day and it's still not enough," she says.
"Bread and water are sacred and they just took it from people. Such actions must be punished, maybe not by us, but hopefully by God's judgement."
Filling her bottles, Ms Kyslovska says she sometimes avoids bathing to save herself a trip to the park, and often washes her clothing in a nearby lake.
She blames the local government for the lack of running water, complaining that nearby Kramatorsk — just 10km to the south — still has water flowing from its taps.
But Oleksandr Goncharenko, the head of Kramatorsk's military administration, says even that comparative luxury was threatened by winter, when the temperature drops to -20 degrees Celsius.
"All these wells and pumps will freeze," Mr Goncharenko says, adding places like Sloviansk and Kramatorsk — which also has no gas — are "hostages of destroyed infrastructure."
Mr Goncharenko says Kramatorsk would drain municipal pipes that run into unheated structures to prevent them from freezing and bursting, and is "99 per cent certain" gas won't be restored before winter.
Electricity cuts and the lack of heating could also see the fire risk soar as people try to heat and light their homes by other means, he adds.
Ukrainian officials are still trying to convince the Donetsk region's remaining residents to evacuate as the war's front line threatens to move westward and the inhospitable winter looms.
Officials in Kramatorsk plan to build more public wells to supply the remaining population, but Mr Goncharenko warns the water quality can't be guaranteed.
Such water would likely be sourced from deep underground, he says, which would be too high in calcium and unfit for drinking.
Ms Mahlii hasn't made plans for what she'll do once cold weather arrives but, after 47 years in her Sloviansk apartment, she will face whatever comes from her home.
"We are surviving!" she says.
"We are surviving by any means."
AP/ABC
