It is not a great distance that separates Mariupol from Shyrokyne - about 15 kilometers of road. But getting there without money or a car is mostly a matter of luck.

No one is allowed beyond the checkpoint at the nearby village of Sopyne except locals and those riding with someone "official" - a volunteer battalion, the OSCE, or a news agency with a vehicle. Stas and I managed to hitch a ride with the Donbas Battalion as they headed back into the restricted zone on a run from Mariupol.

Our driver, a Pole who fights with Donbas, was in a hurry. It was Friday and the banks were closing for the weekend. He needed to stop by a couple of positions to check up on his soldiers and get back to town before 5 pm.

Time was not on our side.

Nor was it before. When we were in Mariupol in May, we spent four days trying to get to Shyrokyne, but the fighting was too intense and none of the volunteers wanted to take responsibility for the safety of a low-budget photographer and his assistant. We managed get to a trench just outside the city that was manned by volunteers from the Azov Battalion, but only for about an hour during a lull in fighting.

This time, we got further. We drove through the ruins of Shyrokyne, once a sleepy resort town on the Sea of Azov that has been all but reduced to rubble. Making our way through the rows of houses, it was almost impossible to find a structure that hadn't been destroyed by months of battle.

The fight for Shyrokyne began in January, when a volley Grad rockets launched from positions controlled by the Russian-backed Donetsk People's Republic landed in a residential neighborhood of Mariupol, killing 30 people and wounding dozens more. About two weeks later, the volunteer battalions defending the areas surrounding the city launched an offensive in response, explaining they hoped to push the front further east so DNR fighters would be too far out of range to launch another artillery strike against Mariupol.

It was one of the few successful Ukrainian offenses so far this year. While DNR fighters and Russian soldiers were busy pounding Ukrainian forces in Debaltseve in February, the volunteers near Mariupol managed to retake several villages east of Mariupol.

After the front moved east, fighting raged in Shyrokyne. By June, DNR forces had retaken an estimated three-quarters of Shyrokyne. Standing in the eastern neighborhoods of Mariupol, it was easy to hear the sound of nearly constant mortar and artillery fire echoing in the distance.

And then things went quiet. DNR forces were ordered by their leadership to leave the town in early July, and Ukraine once again claimed control.

Now, volunteer soldiers hold positions in burned-out structures, such as the destroyed sanatorium building where we met a few of the fighters there.

While the battles for the city have mostly ended, soldiers say they still come under sniper fire by DNR forces. "Walk quickly past the windows," the Polish fighter told us as we made our way through the sanatorium building.

Although the town is under Ukrainian control, there is not much left. The intensity of the fighting and the weapons used in these battles leave towns and villages almost completely destroyed and often vacant as residents become refugees.

We had hoped to find a volunteer I had met a year before in Kyiv, but we couldn't reach him over the radio, and the only mobile operator that worked in Shyrokyne happened to be the one SIM card I didn't have.

The next morning we tried to return to Shyrokyne. After an hour or two trying to hitch a ride from the block post, we decided to pack it in and head back to town. When you have no budget and no car, you have to rely on the benevolence of soldiers to pick you up if they have a free spot in their vehicles and they happen to be going your way.

A few dozen people gathered in Mariupol on Sunday to protest against recent orders for soldiers to withdraw from Shyrokyne. The town lies in the so-called buffer zone which, according to the Minsk ceasefire agreement, is supposed to be clear of weapons and fighters.

The positions are manned entirely by volunteer fighters. The Ukrainian Army never officially endorsed the February campaign to retake the villages east of Mariupol and has been largely absent from Shyrokyne. Volunteers worry that if they leave, DNR forces will try to move back in. Despite being nearly completely destroyed, the seaside town has become an important symbolic piece of territory following months of deadly battles. The victory has made volunteers there optimistic about their chances of retaking territory controlled by the Russian-backed insurgents.

"We will wait until the weather is most uncomfortable for them and continue," said a Donbas volunteer who goes by the name Ilya, explaining he expects further fighting in the winter. "Shyrokyne is just one step. We have to move forward. Next we will figure out Novoazovsk, and then keep moving - to Donetsk and Luhansk."

This war is unusual among modern conflicts in that there is a very clear divide between the war zone and the not-war zone. Just 15 minutes by car from the checkpoint, you have to look for signs of conflict. Aside from a few buildings that were destroyed during fighting a year before when Ukrainian forces drove out DNR fighters from the city and the occasional rumble of a military vehicle driving through the streets, life more or less continues as usual. The beaches on the Azov Sea are filled with locals tanning, people are going to work, and even the train station is working again. Only McDonald's remains closed. In the seemingly far-away capital of Kyiv, it is easy to forget that there is a war taking place in the country.

But after more than a year, the war is taking its toll on Ukraine - physically and mentally. The jokes are getting darker and the mood is heavy among the soldiers and the residents who live near the conflict zone. International media has grown tired of this conflict and moved on to other topics, but that doesn't mean fighting has stopped. When news outlets do pick up on stories from Ukraine, they like to say there is a "shaky ceasefire" in the Donbas. The battle for Shyrokyne took place during this "shaky ceasefire." And although the fighting has largely ended here, Ukrainian military officials report one or two soldiers killed and several wounded on an almost daily basis in other parts of the Donbas region. Perhaps we need to find a better term.

-- Chris Collison
@chriscollison