Under fire in Slovyansk: the fortress city Russia wants Ukraine to hand over

Slovyansk is under constant bombardment from Russian drones, missiles and glide bombs, and it is one of four cities forming Ukraine's "fortress belt" — the reinforced defensive lines in the part of Donetsk Kyiv still controls. Moscow wants Ukraine to surrender those cities, and their fate sits at the centre of peace talks that resumed in Abu Dhabi after a nine-month break between Ukraine, Russia and the US. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has refused to cede the territory, while the White House is sounding positive about the revived negotiations.

The BBC's defence correspondent Jonathan Beale entered the city with a drone unit that calls itself Peaky Blinders, complete with camouflaged flat caps. Twenty-one-year-old Tetiana, who shelved her dreams of becoming an opera singer, scanned her phone for incoming air threats while her colleague Yasha carried a shotgun as a last resort against drones. "If I say run, you run," she told the crew, explaining that moving on foot is safer than driving.

Slovyansk is a husk of itself. Before the war it was home to more than 200,000 people; less than 10% remain, and that number shrinks by the day. A school was recently destroyed by glide bombs, shops are boarded up, abandoned vehicles litter streets hit by remotely operated Russian first-person-view drones, and anti-drone netting over the roads offers no guarantee of safety. Tetiana says the aim is to drive people out "in chaos, gathering up their last belongings and fleeing amid enormous fear and suffering. They want people to have nowhere left to live."

A handful are staying anyway. Iryna works in one of the city's last remaining coffee shops and has already lost her house, but insists: "I won't leave Slovyansk. This is my home." Inga, 53, born and raised in the city, says she stays because she has nowhere to go and no money to leave or support herself afterwards.

Commander Oleksandr, whose unit is down to four of its original members — the rest transferred, were wounded or killed, including his brother — says the sheer density of drones has left neither side able to advance. He reads a prayer of thanks each evening over a shared meal and classical music that drowns out nearby explosions. Of the negotiations, he is blunt: "I really want this war to end, but do I believe these negotiations will succeed? No, I don't really believe they will."

Russia has already seized nearly 90% of the Donbas, though its advances this year have all but stalled against Ukrainian resistance, and October was its deadliest month since the full-scale invasion — more than 54,000 troops killed or injured, according to Ukraine's general staff. Alina Shyrko, who coordinates civilian evacuations from Slovyansk, says the situation has deteriorated fast and families with children have already been ordered out. "Everyone is thinking about leaving," she says. "I'm thinking about it too."