The city is part of what Ukrainian forces call the fortress belt, a line of strongpoints that remains a major obstacle to any wider Russian advance through the Donbas. Ukrainians worry that giving those cities up would make it much easier for Russian troops to push further west, including toward Kyiv.
Ukraine still holds the eastern city of Slovyansk, but Russian drones, missiles and glide bombs are emptying it. Fewer than one in ten of the people who lived there before the full-scale invasion remain.
Before the war Slovyansk had more than 200,000 residents. Less than 10% are left, and the population is still falling by the day.
A specialist drone unit defending Slovyansk allowed rare access to a city under constant bombardment. The soldiers call themselves the Peaky Blinders. Their emblem is a flat cap of the kind made familiar by the television series, though theirs are camouflaged.
Inga, 53, and her colleague Yasha escorted the party in. It was raining and cloudy. The military escorts called that"good"weather, meaning it was bad for drones.
The protection is limited. Anti-drone netting over the roads is no guarantee of safety. Once inside the city, vehicles were left hidden under trees and the rest of the approach was made on foot.
Abandoned vehicles litter the streets, recently destroyed by remotely operated Russian first-person-view drones. Yasha carries a shotgun, a last resort for shooting drones down, and keeps his eyes on the sky.
Tetiana, 21, scours her phone for the latest military intelligence on likely threats from the air. She said the Russians are doing everything they can to intimidate people and drive them out of the city.
She showed a school recently destroyed by Russian glide bombs. Outside, another heavy blast of small-arms fire signalled that more drones were nearby.
Iryna still works in one of the city's last remaining coffee shops. Several drones could be heard buzzing above her, then the crack of small-arms fire as Ukrainian forces tried to shoot them down.
Other towns nearby have already been reduced to rubble and have fallen into Russian hands. Russian forces are still making life in the fortress-belt cities almost impossible, even as Ukraine holds Slovyansk.
The saturation of drones has also made it nearly impossible for either side to advance here. Ukraine still controls the city, but its people — its lifeblood — are ebbing away.