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As Kiev prepared to host the final of Eurovision Song Contest earlier this month, 700km away in eastern Ukraine Yelena Aslanova was holding her own modest party.

She had returned from the capital to spend the weekend in her hometown, Avdiivka, to check on her house and catch up with friends during an apparent lull in a three-year war between government troops and Russian-backed separatists.

Aslanova planned to spend the Saturday evening with her son and three friends in the leafy yard of her small home. Inside, her daughter Zhenya (7) watched cartoons with Sasha (4), the daughter of one of her guests, Maria Dikaya.

Just after 7pm, when in Kiev street parties and laser shows were launching a night of the lightest entertainment, a shell landed in Aslanovas garden.

Arms, legs and heads were scattered around the yard. Not a single body was left in one piece, said Yevgeny Kaplin, the leader of the Proliska aid group whose members were quickly on the scene.

Aslanova (48) and Dikaya (34) were killed with their friends Olga Kurochkina (51) and Oleg Borisenko (50). Aslanovas son, Artyom (27), was airlifted to hospital with terrible head injuries and remains in a coma.

The girls survived because they were inside the house, Kaplin said. But they saw what had happened to their parents. The seven-year-old ran out into the street screaming My mums head has been cut off.

Avdiivka is inured to the sounds of artillery and gunfire from the frontline on the edge of town, but this carnage and the childrens plight shook its people.

Despite nightly shelling and skirmishes close to town, most residential areas have suffered little damage since eight civilians were killed in late January, and Aslanovas neighbourhood was seen as relatively safe.

The bloodshed banished any semblance of security in Avdiivka and coming as a global television audience tuned in to Kievs Eurovision extravaganza it heightened a feeling among locals that the world has forgotten about this war.

Valentina Grigoryevna (62) lives only a few hundred metres from a ravaged industrial district that is the epicentre of fighting in Avdiivka. Every day she talks to soldiers going to and from the frontline, but she is happy to have other visitors.

Her property was hit several times and now she has moved in with friends to have some company. Every house here on Turgenev Street bears the scars of damage and makeshift repair but many residents still refuse to leave.

They said I could go to live in a hostel, but what would I do with my five dogs? Valentina asked, tucking her headscarf behind one ear to hear more clearly. Im not moving out now if they kill me, they kill me.

Power to the area is regularly cut, leaving Valentina and her neighbours without heat, light and running water. Aid groups bring coal and wood in winter, and she fills bottles with water from a nearby spring, despite the danger and difficulty. She even made it to her allotment to plant vegetables earlier this year.

Id have lots of time to do work there. But honestly, its a bit scary, she said, adding by way of explanation: Phut-phut-phut! the sound of bullets zipping past.

The frontline in eastern Ukraine has barely moved since a second so-called Minsk peace agreement was signed in the capital of Belarus in February 2015.

But fighters on both sides are still killed or injured every day, the political points of the deal are not being implemented, and Russia shows no sign of accepting Ukraines pivot to the West or ending its support for and control over separatist forces based in Donetsk just 20km from Avdiivka.

Ukraine is more stable and stronger militarily than at the start of a war that has killed 10,000 people and displaced 1.5 million. It still faces huge challenges in the east, however, where connections with and affection for Russia remain strong.

I see nothing good coming from Russia. But most people here blame Ukraine for whats happening and theyre just waiting for them [Russia and the separatists] to come, said a man living close to where Aslanova and her friends were killed.

Id say 90 per cent of people on this street think that way. So please dont use my name. My house might be targeted.

The strongest television signals in Avdiivka come from the east, allowing the Kremlin and separatist-controlled television channels to dominate the airwaves and stoke anger against a Ukrainian state that struggles to provide basics like work, decent healthcare and compensation for homes hit by shelling.

Damage to housing, social institutions and infrastructure are beyond the governments capacity to manage, said Vanessa Merlet, country director for Czech-base NGO People in Need, which works extensively in frontline towns and villages.

Though the conflict in eastern Ukraine has perhaps fallen off international radars, there is still a very real risk of the humanitarian situation deteriorating even further, she added.

When shelling in 2015 killed Sergei Tretyakovs mother, he relied on help from People in Need and other NGOs to rebuild his small family home in Avdiivka. The state gave us nothing, he said.

Tretyakov (23) lives with wife Alyona (28) and their 17-month-old son Dima just down the road from where a shell orphaned Zhenya and Sasha on May 13th.

The girls are now staying with family members, who live in areas of Avdiivka that are considered to be more dangerous than where their mothers were killed.

We are organising psychological support, said Kaplin, the aid worker. One of the girls didnt talk for several days. But now they say their mums are in heaven.

Relatives are expected to raise the children but it is not known if they will stay in Avdiivka. About one-third of its pre-war population of 35,000 has already fled the grinding misery and sudden, devastating violence of this war.

As she cradled Dima, Alyona said people still living here had a single, simple plan: To survive.

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War shatters lives in eastern Ukraine as world looks away - Irish Times

AFP: The International Monetary Fund said yesterday it will only release a new tranche payment to Ukraine once parliament approves a long-stalled pension system overhaul and land privatisation legislation. The IMF said after completing its latest mission to the war-torn country that Ukraines economy was continuing to recover from a dire recession and was on course to expand by more than two percent of gross domestic product this year.

Ukraine is using a US$17.5-billion (15.6-billion-euro) IMF lifeline to recover from crises sparked by a Russian-backed war in the separatist industrial east that began in April 2014 and has claimed more than 10,000 lives. The loss of industries in the war zone and flight of foreign investors saw the former Soviet republics economy shrink by 17 percent in 2014-2015. But the IMF now expects Ukraine to achieve sustainable growth by cutting the expense of a pension system that accounts for nine percent of gross domestic product and supports about one third of the population. It also wants land sales approved by a parliament in which the government holds only a slim ruling majority and where opposition to the proposal is strong. The IMF said its discussions focused on the pending pension and land reform and on measures to speed up the privatisation process. Securing parliamentary approval of these draft laws will be needed to pave the way for the completion of the fourth review, it said in a statement. Ukraine has so far received only US$1 billion of the US$4.5 billion it hopes to see from the IMF this year. A spokesman for the global lending body told AFP that the size of the next tranche payment would be determined by the IMFs Executive Board after the legislation in question is passed into law. Overall, Ukraine has received US$8.3 billion from the IMF since the package was approved in February 2015. Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has prepared a pension overhaul plan that will undergo further reviews before being submitted to parliament. Senior officials had said they do not intend to tackle the land privatisation issue until 2018. London-based emerging markets economist Timothy Ash said opposition forces in parliament led by former premier Yulia Tymoshenko could use the land reform issue as a pretext for trying to oust the government. Tymoshenko might still use the land issue to call a vote of no confidence in the Groysman government -- waiting for the time of optimal political tensions domestically, and land reform efforts could do the trick, he wrote in the Kyiv Post.

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IMF sets tough new Ukraine loan demands - Daily Mirror

A drought in Ukraine could be the weather shock that sparks a grain price rally, says an analyst.

AccuWeather forecasts hot and dry weather developing in Poland, the Baltic States, Belarus and Ukraine this summer with severe impacts on agriculture.

We do expect drought conditions across much of Ukraine, which may damage crops, meteorologist Tyler Roys said in a news release.

This drought, combined with any damage to crops from the cold snaps of late spring, could yield a smaller crop and in turn lead to crop shortages and price increases across the rest of Europe.

A recent rainfall eased current soil moisture deficits in north-central Ukraine, which had re-ceived less than 50 percent of normal rainfall over the previous 90 days, according to the U.S. Department of Agricultures latest Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin.

More rain will be needed to fully ease the impacts of this springs acute dryness, stated the report.

Rainfall in other parts of the country helped maintain good to excellent prospects for the winter wheat crop and improved soil moisture for the planting of summer crops such as soybeans and sunflowers.

In a separate report, the USDA said dryness last fall delayed planting of Ukraines winter wheat crop, but unusually deep snow cover fully replenished subsoil moisture reserves in the spring and protected crops against frost damage.

However, if drought develops over the summer, it could quickly change the fortunes of Ukraines winter and summer crops, and that could be the weather woe grain markets need to ignite a rally. The winter wheat harvest begins in July and corn harvest begins in late September.

Global grain prices currently reflect ideas that there will be ample grain production this year and total supplies will be bolstered by large supplies carried in from the 2016-17 crop year.

To significantly lift prices, a serious cropping problem is needed in a major production region.

Drought in Ukraine has a lot bigger impact on the market than does drought in the United States, said Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist with INTL FCStone.

Historically, we find a much stronger correlation when there is a weather issue there than if theres a weather issue here.

He has no scientific explanation for why that is the case, but he has a theory. He believes U.S.-based fund managers pay more attention to headlines overseas than ones at home.

They get tired of hearing farmers complain here in North America about the problems, and so they kind of become numb to hearing complaints and it means more when it comes from over there, said Suderman.

Ukraine was the worlds fourth largest exporter of corn and sixth largest exporter of wheat in 2016.

It was also the third largest exporter of rapeseed-canola. Reuters reports that Ukraines rapeseed exports are poised to explode this year. It quotes UkrAgroConsults forecast of a 60 percent rise in 2017-18 to 1.65 million tonnes because of a 70 percent increase in production.

As a result, a significant drought in that country could help lift the prices of a number of key crops. Suderman said a rally would likely start with corn.

If you combine (Ukraines drought) with the reduction in corn area in the United States and in Europe, then that starts to tighten things up a little bit, he said.

World corn ending stocks are expected to be a bloated 223.9 million tonnes at the end of 2016-17, but China holds 45 percent of the supplies and the U.S. another 26 percent.

Outside of those two countries, corn stocks are fairly tight, amounting to a 42-day supply of the crop, said Suderman.

Corn and wheat prices are closely linked, so he believes there would be upward pressure on wheat prices, especially if Ukraines winter wheat crop sustains damage.

Australias wheat crop is also under threat because of El Nino, and damage from a spring blizzard that dumped 250 to 500 millimetres of snow on the U.S. winter wheat crop might be more extensive than originally reported.

One of our people went back to the area late last week, and from the roads things look nice, but you walk in the fields and theres a lot of problems. Its getting worse, said Suderman.

The big funds are heavily net short in the wheat market, meaning they hold a preponderance of short positions that pay off when the market falls. Any weather-related rally that would force the funds to scramble to cover their short positions would exaggerate the rally.

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Forecaster sees drought for Ukraine - Western Producer

On the night of December 8, 2013, demonstrators were gathered in Kievs Bessarabska Square. For two weeks there had been protests across Ukraine against President Viktor Yanukovychs pro-Russian government, and on that wintery Sunday, some dissenters found a symbolic target for their frustration. Primarily aligned with the nationalist Svoboda party, the protestors tore down the 11-foot-tall statue of Vladimir Lenin that had loomed above the square since 1946, and battered it with sledgehammers.

The toppling of the Bessarabska Lenin led to a phenomenon that has become known as Leninopad, or Leninfallthe removal of Lenin statues from around Ukraine. Of course, it wasnt the first time Soviet monuments had been brought low, as statues had been destroyed as early as 1990. But in the following months the intensity increasedso much so that in February 2014 alone, a total of 376 statues were torn down.

Ukrainians had a lot of statues to work with, but their efforts were diligent and comprehensive. In 1990, when Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union, there were 5,500 Lenin statues around the country, more than in any other former Soviet republic. With the countrys 2015 decommunization laws, which outlawed communist symbols including statues, flags, and Soviet-era place names, there was a mandate to remove the last of the Lenin monuments. Today, none still stand. But they havent disappeared.

The afterlife of these statues is the subject of the new photobook from Fuel Publishing, Looking for Lenin. Photographer Niels Ackermann and journalist Sbastien Gobert started the project by searching for the remains of the Bessarabska Square Lenin, and they ended up photographing toppled Lenins across the country. Their goal was not just to see where the physical embodiments of the Soviet past had ended up, but also to discover how Ukrainians felt about the ongoing process of decommunization.

We met scores of people who wanted to discuss the subject, writes Gobert in the book. The name Lenin loosened tongues: for, against, indifferent, nostalgic, vindictiveeveryone had an opinion about Dyadya Vova (Uncle Vlad).

The Lenins that Ackermann and Gobert foundfigures that had previously towered on plinths as a mark of Soviet authoritynow fill car trunks, are hidden in the woods, or are stashed in cleaning rooms. Here is a selection of images of the physical and symbolic remains of Ukraines past.

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The Hunt for Ukraine's Toppled Lenin Statues - Atlas Obscura

Ottawa Citizen

Hepburn: NATO must offer an ultimatum to Russia Get out of Ukraine Ottawa Citizen A picture taken on April 6, 2015, shows Lida Antonova, 79, collecting corn in a field near the village of Petropavlivka. As a tenuous ceasefire brings a lull to Ukraine's yearlong conflict between pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian troops. NATO must ... and more »

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Hepburn: NATO must offer an ultimatum to Russia Get out of Ukraine - Ottawa Citizen