She sits on the side of the road, a small pink figure in the rubble and gray mud, looking at the Ukrainian soldiers who always have a small gift for children like her, left in the chaos of the front line.

Lisa Stanko is 8 years old, with bright blue eyes and dirty hands. She lives with her parents in a house on the side of the road at the entrance to Liman, a city in the east of the country that was practically destroyed and surrounded by mined forests, where she is strictly forbidden to enter, begins her AFP report.

The area was retaken by Ukrainian forces in October after four months of Russian occupation, but the war continues and a rocket fell near her home this morning.

Behind the girl’s cheerful tone, you can feel the shock in her incoherent words, in which she talks in no particular order about the soldier’s gifts, about the explosion that threw her out of bed, about her mother’s kitchen, and about the shrapnel that pierced the door of the house.

“I’m in a bad mood today because of the bombing,” Lisa apologizes.

Her father Victor follows her. “Of course she’s afraid. There is nothing more terrifying than death stalking you. But father is fine,” smiles the 42-year-old electrician, who presents his daughter with a New Year’s toy donated by one of the humanitarian organizations that travel around the region.

In the destroyed Lyman, where the survivors live in the basements of the destroyed houses, there are almost no children left, only adults and the elderly. Most families have fled and “there is no reason to return,” says Kostya Korovkin, the father of 6-year-old Nastya, who is hiding behind him. The man says he has nowhere to go.

Having no friends to play with, Nastya spends her days between the basement and the street a few steps away, with the neighborhood dogs. Sometimes he goes up to the sixth floor of the building, the only place where he can get some internet signal, to take an online class.

Before entering the house, the resident decorated a small Christmas tree and hung sweets on the branches, “but there are no more children to take them down,” he says.

Bakhmut, hell on earth / “I don’t think about my future,” he says

Another cellar, another city. But the war did not just lurk here, it strikes day and night. Bakhmut, one of the hottest spots on the eastern front line, is under constant fire from Russian artillery, and Ukrainian soldiers fighting there call it “hell on earth.”

“Hello, I’m Gleb.” At the bottom of the converted basement, where about twenty people have been living for eight months, a 14-year-old with the serious face of a little man, short hair and a ring in his ear extends a firm hand to visitors. He is the only minor; all the other children have gone.

He spends his days almost exclusively in the basement. He sleeps late, helps the elderly, takes care of a black kitten that found shelter near them, from where the sounds of explosions that destroy the city can be heard.

“I learned to recognize incoming and outgoing fires,” says Glib Petrov, whose main dream is “to go for a walk with a friend.”

To pass the time, he draws – “I don’t show it, but I like it” – tries to read literature or plays on the phone when there is electricity.

“I don’t think about my future, because I don’t know what will happen in an hour, two or tomorrow,” says the boy.

Chronic stress

Dozens, if not hundreds, of children are still stuck in Bakhmut, their parents unable or unwilling to leave.

“These children have already become adults,” sighs Kateryna Soldatova, a volunteer of the association, which set up a shelter in the basement of the school. Christmas tree, TV, warmth… Everything to make them feel even a little bit safer.

But the road to the shelter is extremely dangerous. Two civilians died on the road in recent days.

But this is the routine that 12-year-old Volodymyr follows. “We eat at home, come here. Three times a day,” says the glassy-eyed boy.

“These children are in a situation of permanent insecurity. The world can betray them at any second, everything can be destroyed in an instant,” explains psychologist Alyona Lukyanchuk from the Ukrainian organization SOS Children’s Village. “The difficulty is that their parents are also stressed, focused on survival,” she says.

This chronic stress “affects concentration, cognitive resources” and can lead to serious problems in the medium and long term, emphasizes the psychologist, who refuses to talk about the lost generation.

“I will try to be a little optimistic. There is no safe place in Ukraine, but only a small percentage of children live on the front line. They will need to be monitored, but I am sure many will find the resources to overcome the situation,” she says. (AFP report)

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