By Kontur and AFP | 2025-04-15

SLOVIANSK, Ukraine -- A powerful explosion rattled the windows of a community center in eastern Ukraine, cutting through the silence as a group of teenagers drew at their desks.

"That's a glide bomb," Bogdan Masliy, 15, said casually without looking up.

Three years into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Masliy can easily distinguish the weapons that have been ripping apart his industrial hometown of Sloviansk.

Sitting in a circle on the floor of the Sloviansk Dream center where they socialize and mentor younger children, Masliy and his friends talk about how years of conflict have impacted them.

"We're not teenagers anymore," Masliy said, to nods of somber agreement.

"I want to feel like a child for a second. It's impossible now," added Anna, a 14-year-old from Donetsk province, which the Kremlin claimed to have annexed back in 2022.

Fighting broke out in the town of about 100,000 residents in 2014 when Kremlin-backed separatists fomented an uprising in east Ukrainian cities after historic pro-European demonstrations across the country.

Masliy says he can still remember the separatists and "men in black balaclavas" who controlled his hometown for three months before being routed by the Ukrainian army.

The frozen conflict ground on until February 2022 when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion that has so far killed tens of thousands.

Russia has regularly targeted Sloviansk. Eleven inhabitants, including a two-year-old, were killed in a single attack in April 2023.

'Wake up tomorrow'

The years of fighting have upended lives, forced the displacement of millions of Ukrainians and made planning nearly impossible.

"Wake up tomorrow," was Anna's response to a question about her hopes for the future.

"Because in our country, you don't know if you'll wake up tomorrow," she added.

Sofia, 14, said she hopes to move to the United States to be separated from Russia by "a nice big ocean."

Now the Russian military are only about 10km from Sloviansk and are gradually advancing across the entire front.

Yevgeniia Alfimova, the 53-year-old founder and director of Sloviansk Dream, regrets the lost childhoods but admires the maturity and freedom of young Ukrainians compared to her generation that came of age in Soviet times.

"They're different from us. We can't cage them," she said.

Years of fighting have left Sloviansk dotted with blown out buildings and prompted an exodus of about half its pre-invasion population.

Some 5,500 children still attend school online like in other frontline areas, say city authorities.

'My life, my friends'

Masliy is also taking extracurricular courses in first-aid and knife-fighting.

"The front is not far away; you have to be ready," he said.

When time permits, he meets with his rock band to rehearse and "let themselves float" through the music.

Their musical aesthetic contrasts with the Soviet-style decor of the rented apartment where they rehearse -- a style replicated across Donbas province.

Masliy said the music helps him silence his thoughts about the war and his own displacement at the beginning of the Russian invasion.

He relocated temporarily to to Vinnytsia province, where he said peers called him a "separatist" and beat him up in the street.

Those experiences informed his hopes of becoming a humanitarian capable of explaining his eastern region of Ukraine to residents of the rest of the country who have not experienced the same levels of violence.

Masliy and his friends have been singing more in Ukrainian, mirroring a nationwide trend, in a region where Russian dominates.

Ukraine will one day be able to liberate all territory controlled by Russia, he hopes. His mother, he explained, wants to leave Sloviansk.

"But I've got everything here, my life, my friends," he said.