Chasiv Yar (Ukraine) (AFP) - In a town just west of besieged Bakhmut, heavy snow fails to dampen the earsplitting blasts of artillery that now punctuate daily life.
Chasiv Yar lies a short drive down country lanes from Bakhmut, where Russian forces have been trying to seize control for the last six months in a grinding war of attrition.
The road to Chasiv Yar is the only one out of Bakhmut that Ukraine still controls, and the town is the first stop for those fleeing the city.
But the fighting is creeping closer.
The unmistakable whistling sound of incoming shells sends the few locals left on the streets scurrying back to their homes for cover.
But even there, no one is totally safe.
On the outskirts of Chasiv Yar, a single-storey house takes a direct hit, blowing out its windows and partially demolishing its front wall.
From inside, thick smoke drifts into the air.
Nadezhda Vasykova, 62, refuses to leave Chasiv Yar, despite losing her son, Oleksandr, 31, in the shelling.
"I won't leave my flat no matter what happens.It's mine," she said.
She said some people had already moved "because they have money and know where to go.I'm not going to be homeless.It's better for me to die here in my home."
Defiance
At Chasiv Yar's powder-blue cultural centre, residents and those who have escaped the horrors of Bakhmut congregate for the latest food deliveries.
Humanitarian organisations, many of whom have been risking Russian fire to help Bakhmut's remaining residents, hand out plastic bags of provisions.
But a step-up in the fighting has seen the Ukrainian authorities this week bar access to Bakhmut other than to residents registered to live there, blocking access to aid workers.
Only "those who really need" to go are now allowed in, said Ukrainian military spokesman Sergiy Cherevaty.
Oleksandr Zhivov has had to flee even farther away as he waits "for the Ukrainian army to push them (the Russians) out of Bakhmut."
The 60-year-old farmer fled to Chasiv Yar with his wife and their dog when the war began last year, and rockets ripped through their home.
Another attack in Chasiv Yar forced them to pack up their belongings again and relocate to the next town, Kostiantynivka, another 20 kilometres (nearly 13 miles) away.
Hopefully, he said, they can move back in the next couple of months when the warmer weather arrives and in time for the planting season.
"The Russians won't capture Bakhmut.They'll never capture it.We know it," he added defiantly."So we're just waiting."
Resistance
Predictions about the imminent fall of what President Volodymyr Zelensky has called "Fortress Bakhmut" have so far proved premature.
Ukraine's defence of the city has become a symbol of the country's resistance to Russia's invasion -- despite the high price it has paid in men and munitions.
Even the head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, admitted as much on Tuesday.
"Bakhmut will not be taken tomorrow, because there is heavy resistance," he said in a statement in Moscow.
"We will not be celebrating in the near future," he added, noting Ukraine's mobilisation of troops and increase in artillery fire to defend the city.
Nevertheless, Kyiv on Monday conceded that the situation north of Bakhmut was "difficult", with the village of Paraskoviivka "under intense shelling and assaults".
On the same day, Russia's defence ministry said its forces had captured nearby Krasna Gora, as it moves to encircle the city from the north, south and east.
