Lugansk and Donetsk residents are now used to gunfire. RT’s Maria Finoshina crossed Ukraine’s southeast to see the aftermath of war there – and how it is the civilians who have carried the heaviest burden: relatives lost, homes destroyed, and hope gone.

“I worked all my life and what did I get for it,” exclaims a weeping elderly woman. “Why is this happening? Why, God, why?” Many of those left in the besieged city of Lugansk are either elderly or too sick to leave the frontline.