An elderly woman at a checkpoint in Mayorsk. Photo CC BY-ND 2.0: European Union / ECHO / Oleksandr Ratushniak / Flickr. Some rights are reserved.
Nadezhda leaves her house at 4.30am, an hour and a half before the end of the night-time curfew. The buses are not yet running, so she takes a taxi at the bus stop. The drive from her neighbourhood in Horlivka, a city in the self-styled “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR) to the nearest border crossing (around four kilometres) costs 50 roubles. The driver hands part of the fare over to the separatist “militia men” for breaking the curfew conditions.
