Echoing down the corridors of eastern Ukraine’s Pokrovsk Perinatal Hospital are the loud cries of tiny Veronika.

Born nearly two months prematurely weighing 3lb 4oz, she receives oxygen through a nasal tube to help her breathe while ultraviolet lamps inside an incubator treat her jaundice.

Tetiana Myroshnychenko carefully connects the tubes that allow Veronika to feed on her mother’s stored breast milk and ease her hunger.

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, three hospitals in government-controlled areas of the already war-torn Donetsk region had facilities to care for premature babies.

One was hit by a Russian air strike and the other had to close as a result of the fighting – leaving only the maternity hospital in the coal mining town of Pokrovsk still operating.

Dr Myroshnychenko, the site’s only remaining neonatologist, now lives at the hospital. Her three-year-old son divides the week between staying at the facility and with his father, a coal miner, at home.

The doctor explains why it is now impossible to leave: Even when the air raid sirens sound, the babies in the hospital’s above-ground incubation ward cannot be disconnected from their life-saving machines.

“If I carry Veronika to the shelter, that would take five minutes. But for her, those five minutes could be critical,” Dr Myroshnychenko said.

Hospital officials say the proportion of births occurring prematurely or with complications has roughly doubled this year compared to previous times, blaming stress and rapidly worsening living standards for taking a toll on the pregnant women still left in the area.

Russia and Moscow-backed separatists now occupy just over half the Donetsk region, which is similar in size to Sicily. Pokrovsk is still in a Ukrainian government-controlled area 40 miles west of the front lines.

Inside the hospital’s maternity wards, talk of the war is discouraged.

“Everything that happens outside this building of course concerns us, but we don’t talk about it,” Dr Myroshnychenko said. “Their main concern right now is the baby.”

Although fighting in the Dontesk region started back in 2014, when Russia-backed separatists began battling the government and taking over parts of the region, new mothers started to be kept in hospital for longer because there is little opportunity for them to receive care once they have been discharged.

Among them is 23-year-old Inna Kyslychenko, from Pokrovsk.

Rocking her two-day-old daughter Yesenia, she said she is considering joining the region’s massive evacuation west to safer areas in Ukraine when she leaves hospital.

Many essential services in government-held areas of Donetsk – heat, electricity and water supplies – have been damaged by Russian bombardment, leaving living conditions that are only expected to worsen as winter approaches.

“I fear for the little lives, not only for ours, but for all the children, for all of Ukraine,” Ms Kyslychenko said.

More than 12 million people in Ukraine have fled their homes due to the war, according to UN relief agencies. About half have been displaced within Ukraine and the rest have moved to other European countries.

Moving the maternity hospital out of Pokrovsk, however, is not an option.

“If the hospital was relocated, the patients would still have to remain here,” said chief medic Ivan Tsyganok, who kept working even when the town was being hit by Russian rocket fire.

“Delivering babies is not something that can be stopped or rescheduled,” Dr Tsyganok noted.

The nearest existing maternity facility is in Ukraine’s neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region, a three-and-a-half-hour drive along secondary roads – a journey considered too risky for women in late-term pregnancy.

Last week, 24-year-old Andrii Dobrelia and his wife Maryna, 27, reached the Pokrovsk hospital from a nearby village.

Looking anxious, they talked little as doctors carried out a series of tests and then led Ms Dobrelia to the operating room for a C-section.

Dr Tsyganok and his colleagues hurriedly changed their clothes and prepared for the procedure.

Twenty minutes later, the cries of a newborn baby boy, Timur, could be heard. After an examination, Timur was taken to meet his father in an adjoining room.

As the war reaches the six-month mark, Dr Tsyganok and his colleagues say they have a hopeful reason to stay.

“These children we are bringing into the world will be the future of Ukraine,” he said.

“I think their lives will be different to ours. They will live outside war.”