‘No one wants it to end’: Ukrainian civilians bear brunt of Europe’s longest conflict since the Second World War

Svetlana Karpenko had just moved her mother Nina to the television room when a Grad rocket slammed down outside her window, raking the elderly woman’s bedroom with fire and shrapnel.

“Two steps closer and it would have got us,” said Ms Karpenko’s husband, Oleg Gostrenko, as the three of them cleaned up debris and artillery boomed in the distance.

Along with a church and a pre-school, their two-storey block of flats was one of more than 100 buildings damaged as at least 40 rockets rained down on the town of Novoluhanske, just miles from Russia-backed separatist territory in eastern Ukraine, last week.

With no money to replace their windows, Mr Gostrenko and Ms Karpenko were covering the yawning…

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