The remains” of Slowjansk are preparing for the last battle against the Russian invaders

The message of Slovyansk's leaders to their people has been loud and clear for weeks: go now unless you want to meet Vladimir Putin's army.

The Donbass city with 100,000 inhabitants is about 50 miles west of Severodonetsk, where Russia's superior artillery slowly put down the Ukrainian armed forces last month.

Now that Sewerodonezk is finally in Moscow's hands, Slowjansk is next in the line of fire. And for residents who have not yet taken into account the warnings, the Russians added their own on Tuesday.

In an apparently deliberate attack on civilians, a grenade landed directly on the central market square of Slowjansk when it was employed with customers, two people being killed and injured.

Local officials branded it as "terrorism", although they were not particularly surprised. On the one hand, the shelling of civil areas is now a routine Russian fear tactics before every urban attack. And on the other hand, it marked the anniversary of a day in 2014 when Russian separatists who briefly dominated Slowjansk were finally thrown out.

When The telegraph took a tour of the city on Wednesday, the streets were deadly, apart from the occasional thundering bang from the Russian front line, which is now less than 10 miles east.

But even now that the city is about to be razed to the ground by Russia's superior artillery, some stragglers remain. There were the old and stubborns, the duties and patriotic and those who had nothing else to lose. There were those who were too drunk to take care of each other - and also those who thought that a meeting with the Russian army would not be a bad thing.

Near the market square, still a smoking ruin, the 100 -meter -long main street from Slowjansk is now almost empty, most shops are either nailed with sandbags or boards. The only place that attracted customers was an ATM on which anxious residents remove their existing savings.

"My mother is still here and she is too old to want to go, so I take care of her," said Lisa, who did not want to give her last name while she went through three different bank cards.

"We are stuck here because we are not rich and cannot go anywhere else. I only pray to God that the Russians do not come."

was a little indifferent to Andrej*, a wrinkled, outstanding figure that hiked to his house in a apartment block from the Soviet period nearby. He is not worried about the Russians because his days are counted anyway.

"I have a problem with my heart, so I'm not afraid of death," he said in a croak. "I don't really care whether I will die today or tomorrow."

Slowjansk is located at a rail and road hub in the Donetsk region and is one of the main goals of the Russian offensive in Donbass.

on the edge of the city were signed on Wednesday signs of the approaching storm. Ukrainian military vehicles thundered along the main street with troops and artillery. Further east drove white smoke swaths over the horizon.

At the side of the Russian armed forces, Kremlin -friendly militias from the renegade People's Republic of Donetsk are fighting, for which victory in Slowjansk could feel particularly sweet.

in April 2014, in the wake of the Maidan Revolution, which plunged a Kremlin-friendly government in Kiev, staged their own counter-Putsch in Slowjansk and sent masked armed men to take control of urban buildings. But after less than three months under separatist control, Ukrainian troops conquered the city on July 5, 2014.

A employee of the city council told The Telegraph that the employees were advised to stay away from work on Monday because it was feared that the Russian armed forces would use the date to send “an anniversary message”.

His claims were confirmed by Yuri Pidlylsnyi, a city official and one of the few who still work in the Slowjansk sandbag. He said: "We knew it was the anniversary date, so we told our employees that they should stay at home."

he added that despite the fire that also killed six people on Sunday, the officials were powerless to force people to leave.

"It is your decision, but we have warned her many times, and it has become much more intense in the past few days," he continued. "Will we hold Slowjansk? I think so. It's just the question of whether something is left of it."

Nevertheless, some of Slowjansk's "remains" seem to be particularly optimistic about the prospect of an attack on the Kremlin, and not because of poor health or alcohol -related judgment.

Sergej*, who was in my mid-50s, declined to expressly say that he was pro-Russian. But he gave a cryptic comparison that made his feelings quite clear.

"Imagine a neighbor is irritated by another neighbor for 30 years and takes a blow to this neighbor," he said. "Then imagine that the irritating neighbor screams the rest of the world for help."

Whether this powerful “neighbor” will now also take control of Slowjansk remains to be seen. However, if you do it, you are apparently cheered on by some residents.

*Some names have been changed to protect their identity