ERR's Anton Aleksejev and Tarmo Aarma saw their first anti-drone netting along the roadsides in Donbas around a month ago, and now, almost all the roads near the front are decked out with them.

In places where there is still no netting, the safest way to move about is to follow a military vehicle that has an anti-drone device fitted on its roof. If there are a couple of armed men in the back, better still, Aleksejev reported. Under the protective wing of those soldiers, he and Aarma reached Mykolaivka safely. Mykolaivka is a suburb of Sloviansk, and most of its residents once worked at one of the last remaining power plants in Donbas.

That is, until it was hit – inevitably, given its strategic nature and that it is just 18 kilometers from the front, within glide bomb range, let alone drone range. That strike came last week, killing two, and meaning the area has to get its power from elsewhere in Ukraine.

This in turn requires almost round-the-clock maintenance work, in a similar way to right at the start of the full-scale war nearly four years ago, when Russian troops were only a few kilometers away.

"There's a river there. They were a couple of kilometers from here, maybe even less. Their artillery reached all the way here. Of course, they shelled both our power plant and Mykolaivka," one maintenance worker, Vitalii, told ERR about the recent strike.

He added that the situation hasn't improved since then. "Drones are flying here all the time. All the time," he added.

Another elderly resident, Lyudmyla, added that it is the ordinary people who are in the most danger. "And they are hitting places where ordinary people live. There are no soldiers there, just civilians. How can one comprehend that they are firing at people?"

Lyudmyla and her retired friends, however, don't want to leave Mykolaivka, despite repeated calls to evacuate. Their main concern right now is how to survive the coming winter.

"There is still no central heating. Luckily, we had such a beautiful autumn. In my apartment, I sometimes turn on the gas boiler or the stove for warmth," another, Nadezhda, explained.

While natural gas is still online, electricity continues to be a problem in Mykolaivka – for instance, all elevators in residential and other buildings have been turned off to save power, leaving elderly people living on higher floors to have to walk up the stairs.

"She's 74, she's 78, and she's over 80. And we walk on foot. But what can we do? We need bread; we have to buy something from the store," Lyudmyla recounted about herself and her friends.

Even then, there is no bread in the nearby store – only candy. A local grocery store owner, also called Lyudmyla, reported dwindling customer numbers.

"There are still some, but many are leaving. After three glide bombs hit our power plant and residential buildings were also struck, everyone started to get scared," this Lyudmyla said.

Back at the beginning of the war, she had rather hoped that the fighting might end sooner. "At first, there were talks. We hoped they would reach an agreement. Now I understand that they are talking about their own interests, and not about people's lives," she said.

The storekeeper said she tries to keep in touch with her sister and mother, who live over the Russia-imposed line in occupied Donetsk. But she doesn't dare to talk to them about the war — adding she's convinced that all conversations are being bugged.

"We don't talk about those topics at all, because we mustn't. They understand that they mustn't, and I understand that I mustn't either. We just ask how's your health, how are you doing etc? They care about us, and we care about them."

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