Three things you need to know about the conflict in eastern Ukraine

ARTEMIVSK, Ukraine — As hostilities in eastern Ukraine between government forces and separatist insurgents escalate, this conflict is taking a turn for the more violent and, at times, unconventional. Here's what it's like on the ground.

1. The situation is constantly changing

A glance at a map of hostilities issued daily by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council provides a hint of just how fluid the front lines really are.

Ukrainian forces have nearly surrounded the key rebel strongholds of Donetsk and Luhansk. They’ve also effectively cut the swath of separatist-held territory in the east in two.

National Security and Defense Council/screengrab

But that’s the big picture. The real situation is far more complex.

Across the expansive sunflower and wheat fields here, this war is being fought not only from one city to another, but in some cases from one checkpoint to the next.

Ukrainian units are sometimes ambushed at block posts that control the entrance and exit to a given city or are shelled by rebel mortars or artillery from afar. There’s a front line, but even that may change on a day-to-day basis.

Reporting on the conflict, one might travel a road earlier considered to be relatively safe only to find the thud of artillery fire proves too close for comfort.

That’s largely why international investigators examining the crash site of Malaysian Airlines flight 17 are treading carefully.

Although the area is nominally within rebel-held territory, it sits right up against the front, where both sides are angling to win control over the surrounding territory. As a result, nearby artillery barrages have placed major constraints on where the forensics experts are able to work.

2. Civilians are bearing the brunt of the violence

That artillery fire, whether from Ukrainian or rebel forces, has produced a nasty side effect: a staggering number of civilian casualties, which outnumber military deaths.

Particular attention has been given to the use of ageing missile systems such as the BM-21 “Grad,” which fires barrages of rockets (the name literally means “hail”) and is notoriously inaccurate and extremely deadly.

Although both rebels and Ukrainian forces have openly admitted using the system, both have also repeatedly denied shelling civilians.

Nevertheless, such attacks have consolidated popular anger against the Ukrainian army, which many in eastern Ukraine believe is behind attacks that have left homes destroyed and family members dead.

On a recent sweltering afternoon, Lidia Grigoriyevna, a 79-year-old refugee, sat outside a bombarded apartment bloc in Popasna, a city near the front line, recalling childhood memories of World War II.

This conflict is worse, she says, because there’s often “no warning” of imminent attacks.

Grigoriyevna fled to Popasna from a city closer to the regional capital Luhansk after her neighborhood there came under shelling — only to find herself being bombarded again.

“I don’t even have a way of finding out about my apartment,” she said, fighting back tears. “Is it destroyed or not? What will I do in the winter?”

3. War is the new normal

As the Ukrainian military and other units such as the national guard and volunteer battalions have advanced deep into territory once controlled by separatists, they’ve set up checkpoints and bases in “liberated” cities, using them as jumping-off points for the front.

That means convoys of tanks, armored personnel carriers (APCs) and troop transports regularly cruise between cities on cracked country roads with soldiers perched on top, their automatic weapons hoisted upward.

To get anywhere between towns and cities, local residents must pass checkpoints manned by both soldiers and regular police and are often subject to searches and identity checks.

It’s all become so normal that the conflict has taken on a more surreal atmosphere at times.

It is not entirely uncommon, for instance, to sit at an outdoor cafe here in Artemivsk — roughly 25 miles from the closest part of the front line — and watch rockets streak through the night sky toward far-away targets.

Even here, where rebels never had a strong presence and which was “liberated” with relative ease, locals say they’re used to the odd gunshot or two.

“The sound of machine gun fire doesn’t even draw my attention anymore,” one young waitress says.

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