Jonathan Landay

SLATYNE, Ukraine (Reuters) -The only 10 residents left in the Commune, an apartment complex in the eastern Ukraine town of Slatyne, share the hardships of Russia’s invasion, from relentless shellfire and exploding rounds to a lack of power and running water.

Two blocks located on a small lot and just 100 metres from each other could mean that they are living in two different worlds.

Vera Filipova lives in a grimy and dark home. Blackened pots are scattered around the kitchen, while rumpled comforters rest on untidy beds.

“It’s like hell,” the 65-year-old retired shop clerk told Reuters. Nataliya Parkamento is her friend and she lives in the same place as her former colleague at the shoe factory.

The block remains largely intact – it is not like other buildings in Slatyne. The Commune was spared a direct hit by the fighting for a Ukrainian counter-offensive. This has resulted in the eviction of Russian troops from Kharkiv’s city over the past two weeks.

Filipova and Parkamento have only enough humanitarian assistance to be able to eat one meal per day. Cooking outside, they use shattered wood from nearby homes to make a fire. They protect the flames from the rain by covering them with corrugated cement sheets that have been blown from a roof.

“I have nowhere to go and nobody to take me out of here,” said Parkamento, who fetches drinking water in a plastic bottle from a nearby well.

It is a stark contrast to the surroundings, with abandoned cats digging through the grass and children swinging around on rusty swings.

“WINDOWS BECOMING SMASHED”

Larissa and six others tend the gardens, which include roses and peonies as well as carrots and spring onions. They wash with buckets of water drawn from Slatyne’s many wells. They dry laundry outside in neat apartments with colorful covers and plants on the balconies.

It is just as hard. “Windows are being smashed, walls are being destroyed and there is nothing we can do about it,” Larissa, 46, said. However, she and others from her block tried to make the most of the situation.

The seven residents – none would give their last names – said they share the humanitarian aid delivered to the complex by volunteers from the nearby town of Dergachi, supplementing it with pickled vegetables stocked in a basement.

Alla (52), who ran a Kharkiv subway station, just 28 kilometers (17 miles) south of Kharkiv down a distant, shell-blasted highway, prepares meals for her family using a stove that she uses a propane bottle to heat. When shellfire eases, she ventures out with her husband, Volodymyr, 57, a railway worker who acts as the block’s handyman, to an abandoned home to make meals on a brick grill.

Nobody in the two blocks can explain why they had such different experiences. “I don’t know,” Filipova responded when asked why she and Parkamento put up with their bleak living conditions.

Some found the strength to overcome the difficulties and organize themselves when the war began, while others remained in despair.

“We’ve tried helping them,” said Anna, 66, a tenant of the second block who has lived for 19 years in the complex built in the early 1970s. “When the humanitarian aid deliveries arrive, we visit Vera and Nataliya to bring them their aid.”

According to her and other residents, a crucial factor in their resilience was following a rigid routine. She cooked two meals a day, making sure they had enough for lunch and dinner.

‘WE CARE FOR EACH OTHER’

The couple said they carry water, read and tend their gardens. They also chat on sunny days while sitting at a temporary table under the block’s shadow, trying to avoid loud blasts or small arms fires.

“All of the people who have stayed here for the last three months are like family,” Anna said of her companions. “We have got close to each other. We care for each other.”

Particularly relaxing is gardening.

“I love the soil,” said Alla, whose family hails from a farming village in a Russian-controlled area north of Slatyne. “My soul would ache if I could not plant anything in that earth. This distracts from your true love. How is it not possible not to love your soil?”

Despite their differences in how they deal with it, the war is always present for Filipova and Parkamento as well as Volodiya Sachuk at 34 years old, who live in the basement of another block near the one occupied by the women.

Nobody can forget how it felt to be jarred awake by the Russian missile that crashed into our house.

The explosion blew out that building’s walls and roof, shattered many of the Commune’s windows and shredded Stachuk’s apartment with shrapnel, forcing him to move to his basement.

The blast also killed Filipova’s cat, Gina, she said, and left Alla with a memento of the exact moment of her brush with death.

“The explosion knocked a clock off my wall and broke it,” she recalled. “It stopped at 12:05 am.”