
It's at night that residents of the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk are most afraid, when rocket and artillery attacks happen more frequently. Shells and rockets slam into gardens and apartment buildings, sending chunks of masonry and shards of glass hurtling through the darkness.
Little more than 11 kilometers (7 miles) southwest of the front line and within artillery range of Russian forces, Sloviansk has sustained increasingly frequent attacks. The city is considered a strategic target in Moscow’s ambition to seize all of Donetsk province, a largely Russian-speaking area in eastern Ukraine that makes up part of the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland.