War in ukraine Donbass

'Their mentality is: 'This is our land, and we won't leave it'. They see their pets and loved ones killed, their homes and gardens destroyed, and they still live here anyway'.

Volunteer Alexey Smirnov tells why Donbass people don't want to leave their homeland.

For the last 8 years a huge area separating the two sides of the conflict became a 'grey zone'. Its population is suffering from shellings and had been used as a human shield by Ukrainian nationalists more than once.

Alexey and his team are working on evacuating people from dangerous zones of the conflict, but most of them return home again. Some of them don't have another place to go, some just can't live without their homeland. Watch our video about how Donbass people live in the grey zone.

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