Ukrainians fear a return to the bloodshed of 2014 as Russian forces mass on border

Nervous. Worried. Used to it. Ask a civilian on either side of the frontline in eastern Ukraine how they feel living in the middle of the longest running European war since 1945, and they will usually answer with some combination of those words.

But over the past few weeks, the fears have grown that this delicate status quo is about to collapse into another all-out war.

"It is really tense," said Yuri, a retired police officer who lives in Russian-backed-separatist-controlled Donetsk. "After seven years of war people are used to it all. We might be able to hear shelling at the front but in the city centre we just get on with our lives.

"But everyone is nervous. We have always been able to hear fighting in Marinka and Yasinavata, but recently it has been getting more and more frequent. Summer was quiet, autumn was quiet, and now this," he said.

The war in Eastern Ukraine broke out exactly seven years ago this month, when local separatists assisted and directed by Russian volunteers and regular troops seized control of large chunks of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions and declared independence.

A ceasefire deal brokered by France and Germany in early 2015 froze the frontlines in place and ended mass offensives. But shelling and sniping have continued unabated.

Over the past two months, Ukraine and Russia have accused one another of building up troops on either sides of the lines and increasingly bellicose rhetoric from Moscow has many Western observers worrying that Vladimir Putin may be planning a new offensive.

The White House on Thursday said it believed Russia now has more troops massed on its border with Ukraine than at any time since 2014.

The Pentagon has said it may deploy warships to the Black Sea as a deterrent. Tensions continued to mount on Friday, with the Kremlin rejected a request from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to pull its troops back, saying it had the right to deploy forces in its own territory as it saw fit.

Meanwhile, the Russian foreign ministry bluntly warned Ukraine against seeking Nato membership. "A hypothetical membership in the alliance will not bring peace to Ukraine, but on the contrary lead to a large-scale escalation and may lead to irreversible consequences for Ukrainian statehood," Maria Zakharova, the ministry's spokeswoman, said during a briefing in Moscow.

Any renewed conflict would hit the civilians hardest. The United Nations Human Rights office recorded a total of 3,077 conflict-related civilian deaths, including 148 children, between the start of the conflict and January 31 this year.

That figure does not include the 298 civilians killed when Russian forces shot down Malaysian airlines flight MH17. At least 7,000 civilians have been injured.

At least 13,000 deaths have been recorded in all, including civilians and fighters on both sides. "The damage done to civilians in Ukraine is absolutely devastating and it will take decades to rebuild infrastructure," said Yulia Gorbunova, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.

"The warring parties should take precautions to limit and not let any more damage to civilians happen. And they can do that by abiding by the laws of war."

And the damage is not only felt in the loss of lives. The line of contact has separated previously closely integrated communities from one another, severed infrastructure links, and left communities cut off from essential services like hospitals on one or the other side of the lines.

Alina Kosse, the director of the district children's art centre in Marinka, a shrapnel-scarred village on the frontline less than a mile from Donetsk, insisted she would continue to work come what may.

"We worked in 2014 and 2015. It was important for me not to lose teachers and children who could not leave Marinka with their parents. Schools did not work, but we worked, because children had to be taken from the streets so they would not be caught under the mortars," she said.

But Yuri points out that it may be the rhetoric that is alarming people most of all. If you didn't watch TV (in Donetsk, that means Russian TV announcing alleged Ukrainian troop build ups, not Russia's own), it would be difficult to know something was up.

There is certainly no visible increased military activity in the city itself, he said. That is true even in some Ukrainian-controlled areas.

"We don't have Ukrainian television for the eighth year here," said Ms Kosse, the art centre director on the other side of the lines in Marina.

"People who watch Russian TV feel that the situation is escalating, because Russian television is already talking about the invasion, and that the USA will help Ukraine. And people pass from mouth to mouth everything that is told on TV. Fear is felt. Fear that there will be an attack."

"People are worried. People are very nervous. There are people who prepare suitcases, but I'm not preparing mine. Judging by the information Russian television broadcasts every day, not only the nearby areas will be taken, but the whole of Ukraine," she added.

Irina Prudkova, a film maker from the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, described a strange combination of total calm and mounting worry.

"In 2014, we thought it would be necessary to leave if they started using aircraft. Until now, we did not make such a decision," she said. "But now we understand that the threat exists. We communicate with the military quite often, and the guys on the front line feel it like no one else."

"All volunteers are on the watch. They are all getting ready," said

"But I can't say we are hearing more explosions. If you survived 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, these explosions are not scary. Even if you hear them, you do not react much."