by ROBERT BECKHUSEN

There’s been a violent escalation in the battle for Donetsk International Airport in Eastern Ukraine. The fighting is terrible and carried out in close quarters—and it’s not clear who’s in control.

Russian-backed separatists have besieged Ukrainian troops inside the airport for months. On Jan. 16, the separatists claimed to have driven most of the remaining Ukrainians out of its vast terminal building. The iconic control tower—ridden with holes from artillery fire—collapsed during the recent fighting.

According to The New York Times, the separatists raised their flag over the terminal, and appeared to have largely won the battle. Only a few isolated pockets of “cyborgs”—a slang term for the Ukrainian defenders—remained inside.

But on Jan. 18, the Ukrainian army claimed it retook the lost territory up to a previously-agreed ceasefire line—although this ceasefire is hardly respected by either side.

If true, it means Kiev has pushed the separatists back to where they were a few days ago.

“We succeeded in almost completely cleansing the territory of the airport, which belongs to the territory of Ukrainian forces as marked by military separation lines,” Andriy Lysenko, a spokesmen for the national defense council, said.

One Ukrainian soldier on Facebook—whose page has since disappeared—mentioned a “direct duel” between tanks. “The situation is very tense,” the soldier wrote.

The Ukrainian army also used some creative tricks, such as resupplying the besieged soldiers with fresh ammunition using a remote-controlled “electric pallet truck,” Ukrainian soldier Roman Donik posted on Facebook.

“The Donetsk airport is truly our Stalingrad,” Donik wrote. “This is the Stalingrad of this war.”

There are several reasons why Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists are throwing so much sweat and blood into the airport. For one, the battle grew to possess huge symbolic significance.