Uneasy calm and domesticity have settled over rebel positions in the ruins of front-line towns in east Ukraine as steps are taken to observe a fragile cease-fire that each side expects the other to violate with a fresh offensive.
Near the charred shell of a tank, destroyed in a recent battle in the village of Molochnoye, a woman clad in camouflage fatigues cooked beetroot soup, while rebel fighters fashioned an empty ammunition box into a sidecar for an old Soviet motorbike.
Fighting, which virtually razed the nearby towns of Debaltseve and Vuhlehirsk, has died down with a three-week-old cease-fire broadly holding. But pro-Russian separatists are on guard in case violence flares again.