Every few minutes, the ground shakes as explosions echo through the battered streets of Siversk, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.. Sometimes it's shelling from Ukraine, sometimes the Russians return fire, says CNN reporter Ben Wedeman.

An elderly woman in black trousers, heavy boots, a dirty gray coat and a headscarf shuffles down the street. There's another explosion. She flinches, her eyes go wide, but she doesn't slow down.. She joins a crowd of several dozen people, mostly elderly residents, wrapped up in the cold..

The roads are covered in mud and debris from countless projectiles.. A few cars are forced to go around water-filled craters from fallen bombs.. The upper floors of some apartment buildings have turned into ruins, there is not a single intact window.. Telephone and electrical wires snake across the ground, long dead.

“Of course, we used to be very scared,” says Lyubov Bilenko, 72.. - Now we are used to. We don't even pay attention anymore.

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Bilenko told CNN that she left her apartment, where she lives alone, on the main street of the city to collect her monthly pension, which is brought to the city by the mobile division of Ukrposhta.. Bilenko's pension is just under $80 a month. That's enough to buy some food from one of the few stores still open..

A small yellow and white Ukrposhta van arrives in Siversk once a month. Smiling Anna Fesenko leads the mobile group. While she and her colleagues check documents against the list of recipients and dispense cash, Anna tries to cheer up the weary residents of the city.

Fesenko says she has been working at Ukrposhta for 15 years, but was not ready for what she is doing now. "

Before heading the mobile unit, Fesenko worked at the post office in Bakhmut, about 13 kilometers south of Siversk.. But in mid-autumn, fighting around the city became so intense that she and her colleagues had to evacuate..

She understands that her job is not only in the issuance of pensions: She must remind the residents of Siversk that they are not forgotten. "

We left Siversk around noon.. “An hour later, a Russian artillery shell exploded a block away from us,” postman Fesenko said by phone.. According to her, no one was hurt, she and her colleagues finished the job - they distributed cash to those who were still waiting, and only then left.

According to the Minister of Social Policy Oksana Zholnovich, in the conditions of martial law, pensions can be delayed for several days. According to her, the delays are due to the fact that the State Treasury distributes funds for different sectors.. And the priority now is the defense of the country. " That is, the payroll of the Ministry of Social Policy will wait until they collect money for the military. But we are second in line, so usually delays through the Treasury are minor and mostly technical,"