‘If I panic it will be worse.’ In Donbas, weary civilians try to cope.

The well-worn Ukrainian settlement a few miles west of Kramatorsk is in the direct line of a Russian troop advance. But Anna Lunina – with her three youngest children playing around her – is determined to remain composed.

As an explosion sounds just over the horizon, her daughter Yulia, 9, reacts by throwing up her arms in mock not-again exasperation, a single braid of black hair bouncing as she glances up to the sky with a look of trepidation that seems more real.

“This is the guys saying, ‘Hello.’ It can start at 5 a.m. and go all day,” says Ms. Lunina, of the “noisy” shelling that has increased here and all along the arc of the Donbas front lines in eastern Ukraine, as Russian forces bid to encircle this industrial heartland.

“I try to be calm and not panic,” says the lanky mother of five in a “Star Wars” T-shirt, as her youngest son, Ruslan, 5, demands a hug. “They cry, but if I panic it will be worse.”

Three more booms reverberate loudly across the budding greenery of the early spring landscape, where rutted mud roads have finally dried.

“This is quiet – they are just starting,” mutters Ms. Lunina. “When the windows shake or the doors open, then we go to the bunker.”

Ukrainians in the Donbas are used to conflict, and have weathered war since 2014, when Russian-backed separatists seized portions of Luhansk and Donetsk. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began 72 days ago is of a different magnitude, and is redefining the lives of those few who remain here.

From church faithful, who distribute food and organize evacuations, to police officers registering an uptick in murders – and even ordinary citizens just trying to cope with panic and paranoia – all describe communities under extraordinary and increasing pressure.

“No safe place”

For these Donbas residents, the April 8 Russian attack on the Kramatorsk railway station, when it was heaving with several thousand would-be evacuees, was a shared and galvanizing event. Russian cluster munitions killed some 59 civilians, replacing any lingering sense of invincibility with a new and harrowing vulnerability.

“We understood that there is no safe place at all,” says Evhen Pavenko, an official of the Ark of Salvation Pentecostal church, which is housed in a Soviet-era theater near the train station, and has become a humanitarian aid hub and bomb shelter.

In his wallet, Mr. Pavenko carries a sharp piece of shrapnel the size of a fingertip, one that burst from the Russian cluster munition. It reminds him of why he saw so many dead Ukrainians on the train platform that day.

“It’s really hard to gather people to evacuate now, because everyone is hesitating,” he says.

At the station, he points out the blast pattern of one impact on the train platform, near where cloth flowers in the Ukrainian national colors of blue and yellow are tied to a rail, amid several children’s toys.

“I’m very surprised I was not traumatized in my soul,” says Mr. Pavenko. “There were many, many dead here.”

Hard times, at night

Among the casualties that day was Maryna, a 30-something mother trying to flee the Donbas with her two daughters. Yulia, 8, was untouched but traumatized by the explosions, and could not speak for hours afterward. Katya, 12, was severely wounded but survived, because a man threw himself on top of her before he died himself.

“He saved Katya,” says the girls’ grandmother, Nina Lialko, speaking in the town of Druzhkivka, south of Kramatorsk. The English teacher is distraught as she describes Katya’s multiple surgeries.

“After the death of my daughter, I am not afraid of anything,” says Ms. Lialko. She was the only person at Maryna’s funeral, and won’t leave the Donbas now. “It is very difficult, especially at night, alone, and I feel awful,” she says.

Dasha Serokurova says those moments at night were also the most difficult moments for her mother, who finally last week boarded a dawn evacuation van from Druzhkivka.

“From the very beginning, she was very anxious,” says Ms. Serokurova, wiping away tears as she waved goodbye to her mother. “With every air raid siren she would go to the shelter, which made her more nervous.”

The exodus of 70% to 80% of the prewar population has given these sandbagged and boarded-up Donbas cities the feel of ghost towns, adding to the sense of isolation for those who stay.

Members of the Protestant Church of Good Hope, who organize evacuations from Druzhkivka, say they used to do larger, daily runs of evacuees to the Kramatorsk rail station, until it was targeted.

They have replaced fear with faith, as risks increase. Several took part in rescue efforts at Kramatorsk, and have been thanked for providing aid and even coffins.

“We are believers, people of faith,” says Olena Severyna. “We trust God. We pray every day that, with God’s will, there won’t be a hair that falls from our head.”

“Of course we are afraid and nervous, but we are trying to concentrate on our work,” says her husband, Serhii Severyn.

Pro-Russian sentiment

Adding to the pressure has been continued, local pro-Russian sentiment, despite evident Russian military brutalities on front lines across Ukraine.

“They watch Russian TV, and believe that Ukrainians are attacking themselves,” says Petro Serhiievsky, who works for the Druzhkivka City Council. “Russian propaganda is very, very powerful” in the Donbas, as in Russia, he says.

“I am very surprised. There are still people here who do not feel anything, are not empathetic,” says Mr. Serhiievsky. In one example, during Easter, he says several pro-Russian residents broke curfew, set up a table outside, and drank noisily. They only stopped when soldiers came and shot into the air.

Yet Mr. Severyn says he knows how the anti-Ukraine propaganda works, after living in Russia in 2012. “They used to show the Ukrainian government and activists as fascists, so it has been a decade,” he says of Russia’s self-declared “denazification” mission in Ukraine.

The result of the increased pressure in these towns is plain to see, according to police in Druzhkivka. Burglaries are up, and there have been two homicides in the past two weeks – one of a man who refused to hand over his car for an evacuation. He was killed with a hammer.

“Usually we have one murder a year,” says the head of the police station, who gave the name Dmytro. The police also caught an infiltrator whose tracking of Ukrainian troop movements led to a Russian attempt to strike a military convoy.

“We are trying to encourage people to leave,” says Dmytro. A “precise hit” on the power station that day, he says, which knocked out electricity for hours and played havoc with phone signals, is a sign that “it is not as safe as it was.”

The rising tide of uncertainty is raising levels of fear. At a food distribution in Kramatorsk, for example, where dozens of people wait outside an apartment block to receive potatoes, tinned food, and other staples from a church charity, a woman in a blue puffer jacket sidles up to a visitor with a camera and asks that photos not be taken.

“These photos can be used by Russians to target this place,” says the woman, who gave the name Nadiya. “A lot of people posted on social media the evacuations at the Kramatorsk train station, which assisted the attack.

“I don’t want to be targeted. This is no use to your job, or to us,” says the woman, her gray hair pulled back by a large purple hair clip. An air raid siren starts its wail.

“I wasn’t at the railway station, but I was very close. I’m very scared after that,” says Nadiya. “People are different now. I can tell even by the people standing here: People who had anxiety before, it’s increased a lot.”

Puppies to play with

Among those carrying their food from that distribution point up the sidewalk is the family of Anna Lunina. The day of the railway bombing, they were waiting for a bus that would have delivered them to a stop across the street from the blast – but by chance it was delayed.

Now they are at home, listening to jet fighters overhead, and trying to determine if the explosions are getting closer. Last week, a neighbor buried a soldier son.

Children Yulia and Maksym, 8, take the steps down into the concrete cellar out back – built with the Stalin-era house in 1944 as winter storage for vegetables. It now doubles as the family shelter: Plywood on tires form three beds, and there is some food, jugs of water, and even a homemade antenna for a small TV screen.

Yulia complains that most of her friends have left, so “there is no one to play with.”

But there are three new puppies, which arrived soon after the start of the Russian invasion, and have wartime names: Bullet, Powder, and Hurricane – the latter for a multiple rocket system.

When were they born? Ms. Lunina jokes, “Probably at the first explosion.”

Reporting for this story was supported by Oleksandr Naselenko.