Caught on the front lines : the underground life of the war-torn city of Bakhmut, Ukraine

Caught in the bloody Battle of Bakhmut, civilians there have lived in the crossfire for months, forced to take cover as Russia desperately tries to recapture a Ukrainian city that has become the epicenter of the fighting.

No place in Bakhmut is “not covered in blood,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said recently during a visit to a bombed-out ghost town.

“Not an hour goes by when the terrible roar of the artillery is not heard. But Bakhmut stands,” he said.

Last year, 70,000 people lived in the city in eastern Donetsk province. But after Ukraine’s resistance in Kharkiv and Kherson late last year, Bakhmut became Russia’s main target – one of the few front lines in Ukraine where Russia remained on the offensive.

At the beginning of December, after months of hiding, only about 10,000 civilians remained. And now, after new attacks over Christmas, Zelenskyy says, “there are only a few left.”

But as soldiers continue their brutal urban warfare in Europe’s new no man’s land, families are still hiding in the city.

Photographer Andre Luis Alves went in search of families – from children to the elderly – who could survive in a besieged homeland.