MARIUPOL, Ukraine—Like manmade thunder, the artillery concussions cut through the light drizzle on the grey, overcast day.

Standing in the unpaved parking lot of the Ukrainian National Guard Azov Regiment camp, Ivan Kharkiv, a 20-year-old soldier who has been with the unit since May 2014, smiled and pointed in the direction of the shelling.

“You hear that?” he asked. “That’s what peace sounds like.”

Sometimes the explosions rolled through the air as a gentle rumble. Other times they came in hard staccato shocks strong enough to feel in your chest. But they were always in series.

Boom, boom, boom.

Thud, thud, thud.

“That’s coming from where we’re going,” Ivan said as he threw a body armor vest over his shoulders and fastened the Velcro straps. “It can be very dangerous out there.”

Life in Mariupol, Transformed by War

It was about 3 p.m. on March 31—44 days after Ukraine cease-fire went into effect. The sounds of artillery were coming from a battle between Ukrainian Azov Regiment troops and pro-Russian separatists in the town of Shyrokyne, which was about eight miles away.

The shelling and small arms fire would continue until after dark that night.

Two other Azov soldiers already clad in protective gear opened the trunk to the Audi station wagon—their ride into combat—and loaded it with Kalashnikov assault rifles and first-aid kits. Ivan made a joke in Russian and all three laughed, showing their calm nerves.

The Azov soldiers piled into the Audi and set out toward the front lines. The artillery was so loud now it was audible inside the sealed car.

As the Audi turned the corner out of the Azov Regiment camp, it passed by a field where children were playing soccer. The game was going on uninterrupted. Both the players and parents sitting on the sidelines were seemingly ambivalent to the sounds of heavy weapons down the Sea of Azov coastline, as if mortars and artillery were normal parts of the afternoon din.

Azov Regiment soldier Ivan Kharkiv. (Nolan Peterson)

Azov Regiment soldier Ivan Kharkiv. (Nolan Peterson)

Mariupol and its nearly 500,000 residents have evolved in many ways since Sept. 5, 2014, the date of the Ukraine conflict’s first cease-fire.

There is less traffic on the streets and fewer pedestrians on the sidewalks. Shuttered restaurants and cafes line Lenina Prospekt, the city’s main road. Military trenches and dug-in fortifications ring the city.

The Mariupol airport, which was converted into a Ukrainian military base over the summer, is now a barracks. The airport grounds are dotted with machine gun pillboxes, barbed wire, trenches, tank barriers and mine fields. Passenger train service to Mariupol has been cut off. The closest train station is in Berdyansk, about an hour to the west through several military checkpoints.

At heavily defended checkpoints lining the city’s eastern flank, drivers must answer a military challenge and response code to get in and out. At checkpoints in other directions, traffic frequently backs up as soldiers carefully inspect cars for contraband and pore over people’s documents.

A series of terrorist bombings in other cities with simmering separatist movements such as Odessa and Kharkiv have left the Ukrainian troops defending Mariupol concerned about sabotage from infiltrating enemy fighters.

Prices have gone up for nearly everything, straining the resources of the industrial town, where the average monthly salary is around $90.

“Life is getting worse and worse,” one old man shouted during a Wednesday meeting of a local pro-democracy and anti-corruption group called Together.

But the muted reaction to the sounds of heavy weapons at the soccer game on Tuesday highlighted another way the city’s nearly 500,000 residents have adapted to the constant threat of conflict.

“People are used to the fighting now,” said Katerina Altunina, a 25-year-old teacher. “But most still hope that everything is going to be good eventually.”

Introduction to War

Last summer the sound of artillery elicited a much different response.

On Sept. 4, 2014, the day before the cease-fire, the sounds of a separatist tank attack on a Ukrainian checkpoint cut through the city. The staccato thuds were hard to distinguish at first, sounding like tree branches knocking in the wind. But the sounds steadily grew in intensity until there was no questioning what they were.

A group of young men playing soccer at a fenced-in pitch by the beach that day stopped in their tracks and let the ball bounce to a stop. Players from both teams mingled together and talked in hushed tones as they stood facing in the direction of the percussive shocks. After a few minutes they quietly shook hands and left.

Later that afternoon, as the sounds of heavy weapons began again, strangers sitting at one of the Sea of Azov’s beachside cafes looked at each other with frightened expressions that seemed to ask, “Did you hear that too?”

“Back then most residents had a bag packed with a few days worth of clothes and some documents in case they had to leave,” Altunina said. “People were scared.”

Improvised bomb shelters were built around the city. There was a run on ATMs and grocery stores. Many residents wrestled with the difficult choice of whether to stay in Mariupol and risk being caught up in a street-to-street battle or flee the city as refugees.

But the Sept. 5 cease-fire muted the sounds of heavy weapons, and that night the mood in the city was exuberant.

Restaurants that had been shut down were reopened. Banquet halls and hotel lobbies were filled with wedding receptions. Bars filled with customers stayed open late. Teenagers zipped by in their cars, loud music blasting from the windows. The city, which had been holding its breath for the unthinkable, was gasping in relief.

A New Reality

Now, more than six months later, those scenes of celebration have disappeared, spoiled by nearly seven months of continued, heavy fighting on the city’s outskirts, which have left the city’s residents and the Ukrainian units deployed to protect them in a constant state of alert.

“One of the strategies of the enemy is to instill fear,” said Kharkiv, who has served with the Azov Regiment since May 2014, when the unit was still a civilian volunteer battalion. “It exhausts peoples’ nerves and resources.”

The constant tension also affects the soldiers, Kharkiv said. They have to stay on alert for an attack on the city that they are certain will happen, while obeying rules of engagement implemented after the Feb. 12 cease-fire deal, which often prevent Ukrainian units from returning fire.

Ukrainian soldiers recovering at a hospital in Mariupol. (Photo: Nolan Peterson)

Ukrainian soldiers recovering at a hospital in Mariupol. (Photo: Nolan Peterson)

“I’m ready for the cease-fire to end so we can shoot back,” Kharkiv said. “We’re ready to fight and feel like real soldiers again. We have forces concentrated here and we are trained in urban warfare. If the Russians attack they will lose thousands of their soldiers.”

Civilians have adapted to the constant strain in different ways. Some say they feel like their lives have been put on hold.

“I just go to work and stay at home at night,” said Vera, a teacher in Mariupol. “I hear the sounds of the fighting and I don’t feel like doing anything else.”

Others treat the prospect of a street-to-street battle for the city with a sense of humor.

At a Wednesday meeting in downtown Mariupol, Peter Andrushchenko, one of the Together’s leaders, made a pitch for investing in the city’s long-term success: “We are investing in our future. If we invest one Hryvnia today, one day it will be worth 10.”

Helen Popova, a university professor in attendance, dryly replied, “If we stay alive,” eliciting chuckles from some in attendance.

‘What Will Happen to Our Soul?’

But underlying Popova’s joke is a deeper worry that the threat of a separatist siege will diminish long-term investments in education, promoting democratic values, and the arts—pursuits which have little import for people consumed with the day-to-day concerns of wartime.

“The war is going on,” Popova said. “But what will happen to our soul when it is over?”

Numerous groups like Together have popped up across Mariupol since the Maidan revolution in February 2014. In addition to fighting corruption, they promote democratic values such as freedom of speech, government accountability, education, government transparency and fair elections.

Andrushchenko said he is concerned that the conflict will distract Mariupol’s residents from continuing the kind of grassroots cultural changes needed to have a true democracy and overcome behaviors learned during the Soviet era.

“Mariupol is caught between the past and the future,” he said. “People are still afraid of the government, but they have to understand that politicians serve the people and that you have to take charge of your own future. You have to be inspired to make a change.”

The constant threat of war is also straining the social fabric of the city, which has yet to heal from a separatist takeover in April and May 2014. Ukrainian forces ultimately took back the city after a series of skirmishes, which left the city administration building and police headquarters in ruins and about 50 people dead, according to disputed government statistics.

Ukrainian soldiers now deployed for the defense of Mariupol recount instances of being turned away in cafes and restaurants for being in uniform.

“They told us to go away because you brought the war here,” one Ukrainian National Guard soldier, who asked not to be named due to security concerns, said from his hospital bed in Mariupol.

The Jan. 24 Grad rocket attack on a residential neighborhood in Mariupol that left 20 dead also reopened old wounds in the city, sparking a debate about whether separatists or Ukrainian forces were to blame.

Yet, while Mariupol remains divided, the realities of war have diminished some of the ideological zeal that helped spark the separatist uprising in April 2014.

“People just want to live in peace,” said Olga Ashihmina, a journalist.

She continued in an email: “You know, we always think that we are living in a small city, small country. And the world doesn’t know about us. In other countries people are asking: Ukraine, where is this? But today we are famous, even our city. And at what price.”