The two houses in what had been no man’s land in the isolated farming village of Posad-Pokrovske, located between Russian and Ukrainian forces, are badly damaged by shelling.
There is no power or heating and the surrounding fields are heavily mined, making them unworkable.
Yet the Kovalyov brothers – Stepan, 80, and Volodymyr, 77 – and their wives have decided to stay in this southern Ukraine village to live out their days in the place they know best.
The couples survive off meagre state pensions and rely on relatives and volunteers for food.
Stepan and his wife Tetyana, 79, live in a cellar next to their old bungalow, which, like many other buildings in Posad-Pokrovske, was all but flattened in the fighting.
“We are 80, we’ve worked all our lives, in the same garden and now we’re waiting for death,” Stepan said. “What else can we be waiting for?”
Volodymyr and Tetiana, who is 76, sleep in the last room of their house that still has a roof over it.
Tens of thousands of Ukrainians face similar challenges as Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II approaches its second year.
Many fled towns and villages close to the front lines when war raged around them, although some, the elderly among them, refused to leave.
Russian troops reached Posad-Pokrovske, some 36km (22 miles) northwest of the city of Kherson, on February 25 last year, the day after Russia launched the full-scale invasion it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
It was as far as they were able to push north, and the area around the small settlement became a no-go zone between enemy forces.
The ground is now littered with ammunition boxes, bullet casings and burned-out Russian tanks. Mines lay scattered, two unexploded missiles protrude from the earth nearby, deep, narrow trenches snake through fields and house after house lays in ruins.
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