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Donetsk, Ukraine (CNN) -- Yuri Poznychenko has lived in the village of Stepanovka, close to Ukraine's border with Russia, all his life.

Poznychenko, 67, was born a few years after the Red Army recaptured this land -- and the strategic hill of Saur Mogila nearby -- from Nazi forces. He is a stoic man, a farmer who knows endurance. But the events of the last few months reduce him to tears.

On July 28, amid battles between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists for the area, a sniper from the Ukrainian National Guard shot dead Poznychenko's 36-year-old son as he tried to move his car to safety.

"They said they thought he was a separatist," he says, wiping his eyes. "They apologized later, and a soldier helped bury him." The inadequacy of the gesture goes unsaid.

In June, when we last came here, Stepanovka was a neat village set in rolling farmland. Its people were poor but they had work and enough to eat. Now, as bitter winds blow in from the east, much of the village is in ruins. A decapitated Ukrainian tank sits astride the one road, electricity wires dangle in the wind, and 20 or more properties have been reduced to ruins, including Poznychenko's.

He and his wife are the only members of their family left in Stepanovka. They have nowhere to go, no electricity and little food. Poznychenko says the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), now in complete control of this area, has promised to restore power, but there is no sign of the extensive work that will be needed. And in a few weeks' time, the temperature here will rarely stray above freezing.

The wreckage of this year's battles is strewn around Stepanovka and many other villages in eastern Ukraine. The copper of spent bullets gleams in the wintry sun, sandbags sag over deserted trenches, and the husks of tanks and other military vehicles slowly turn from green to rust.

Crisis in Ukraine

Crisis in Ukraine

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Starving and scared in Ukraine