Bakhmut (Ukraine) (AFP) – This week’s Russian missile attacks on power plants threaten cities across Ukraine with blackouts, but many frontline communities have been under shellfire and without power or water for months. The wine-making and salt-mining town of Bakhmut, is still held and grimly defended by Ukrainian forces, but its desperate residents have been under threat of Russian guns since May. One resident, Oleksandra Pylypenko, is tied to her house because her husband, sick with lung cancer, “can’t even make it to the basement” to hide from the shelling, let alone flee the town.
