IN A hospital yard an old Humvee is surrounded by soldiers with long faces, wide eyes and hollow cheeks. The doors are shrapnel-ridden, the windows misty and the Ukrainian flag hangs in tatters. The flag, the men and the Humvee have the dazed look of those who have cheated death. Artemovsk, once a backwater known for a salt mine and wine, has become the centre of Ukraine’s mismanaged but dogged war effort. Inside the hospital, the trauma ward is filled with wounded from the battle for Debaltseve, some 45km (28 miles) to the south-east.

After their latest push on Debaltseve, pro-Russian rebels are hemming in thousands of Ukrainian troops on three sides, and are close enough to shell their supply route from Artemovsk. Ukraine’s generals have ordered their men to hold the line while diplomats struggle to revive the Minsk peace deal. Their soldiers fight valiantly, but with little understanding of the strategy. “We’ve either got to attack and even out the line, or retreat,” says one. “We’re doing neither.”

Debaltseve’s strategic value lies in its rail and road links. With time, it has assumed symbolic importance. “There is not a tactical explanation for what Ukraine is doing,” says Igor Sutyagin at RUSI, a London-based think-tank. “There is a political and psychological explanation.” Losing Debaltseve would dent morale. Doctors in Artemovsk say official casualty figures are understated. Draft-dodging haunts Ukraine’s mobilisation effort. Criticism of the generals has mounted since the loss of Donetsk airport. Although Ukraine’s forces have so far given up little ground at Debaltseve, its fall is a matter of time.

The road to Debaltseve runs through fields dotted with craters. Inside the city, water, gas and electricity have all been cut. Artillery crumps relentlessly, driving thousands into their basements. On one recent morning, a haggard crowd gathered to await evacuation by volunteers who make the harrowing journey daily. Tatiana Lashuk and her three children stood with their belongings stuffed in a blue plastic bag. “Who is waiting for us now?” she asked. Her seven-year-old daughter did not even flinch at the sound of rocket fire.

Most of those who make it out of Debaltseve head north to temporary housing for the internally displaced (who number nearly a million). Most of those who stay end up at the Artemovsk morgue, whose director, Ruslan Fedonyuk, has already dealt with more bodies in 2015 than is usual in an entire year. The morgue has not had a weekend off in months. Yet Mr Fedonyuk and his staff have not been paid since November. “We’ve essentially been abandoned,” he says.

Even as Ms Lashuk fled and Mr Fedonyuk laboured on this week, the latest round of peace talks in Minsk was faltering. The contact group’s chairman laments that the pro-Russian rebels are “not even prepared to discuss implementation of a ceasefire”. The rebels’ leader, Alexander Zakharchenko, has announced plans to swell his fighting force to 100,000 men. He would struggle to find that many on his own, but his mobilisation may be used as cover for more Russian troops. Weapons continue to flow unobstructed across the border. And according to NATO intelligence, hundreds of regular Russian soldiers are in the Donbas region.

Some in the West argue that military aid to Ukraine is the only way to halt Russia’s aggression—or at least raise the cost to Vladimir Putin. A new Atlantic Council report, written by eight former officials, proposes $3 billion of military supplies over the next three years, including anti-tank missiles. “Only if the Kremlin knows that the risks and costs of further military action are high will it seek to find an acceptable political solution,” the report argues. Barack Obama has resisted calls for military aid; Ashton Carter, his nominee as defence secretary, is in favour (see article). John Kerry, the secretary of state, flew to Kiev this week for peace talks. On February 5th Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s François Hollande announced that they too would go to Kiev and then to Moscow.

Opponents of military aid, including Germany, warn of a proxy war with Russia that the West cannot win. No NATO country is ready to send in troops, and Ukraine’s forces are underequipped, undertrained and poorly led. The suggested weapons are “needed, but will not be a game-changer,” argues Konrad Muzyka, a defence analyst at IHS Jane’s. Sending weapons could provoke a Russian response and play into Mr Putin’s claims that Ukraine’s army is a NATO foreign legion. Russia would just send more equipment to the rebels, says Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Centre. If Mr Putin called in the full force of the Russian army, no amount of arms would save Ukraine, as even the most hawkish would admit.