In Donetsk region coveted by Putin, how one city carries on

After a particularly harrowing night of Russian drone and missile strikes this month, Viktoria Horban knew exactly what she would do to lift the spirits of her beleaguered city near the front lines of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“I thought, today is the right day to put up the Christmas decorations in the shop,” says the ebullient store clerk at Ramazan, a women’s fashion shop on Sloviansk’s main square, where she has “helped women feel beautiful” for 23 years.

“I knew the tree and the twinkling lights would cheer people up,” she says. “With all the sadness and uncertainty we are experiencing, I thought we needed something happy and bright.”

Despite valiant efforts like Ms. Horban’s, these are far from the happiest of times in Sloviansk, a city in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region known for its ceramics industry – and which is less than 20 miles from the front.

A turbulent decade saw the city briefly seized by Russia-backed separatists in April 2014, then liberated months later at high cost by Ukrainian forces, only to face the accelerating violence of the full-scale invasion which began in February 2022. Now, a depopulated and largely economically inactive Sloviansk is again under threat.

Russia’s onslaught of strikes against civilian infrastructure here has recently intensified, while Russian forces on the eastern front line, stalled and perishing at devastating rates over the summer, have again made small – but for Ukrainians, demoralizing – territorial advances.

But perhaps most harrowing for the people of Sloviansk are Russian President Vladimir Putin’s repeated vows to take all of Ukraine’s Donetsk region – 70% of which his forces already occupy – either through a diplomatic agreement or militarily.