The Big Apple’s tiny Ukrainian namesake sits uneasily just kilometres away from the front lines of Europe’s bloodiest armed conflict.

Its fewer than 10,000 residents often go to sleep to the sound of cannonades or gunfire, and occasional shells shot by pro-Russian separatists sometimes reach the town that is big enough to be divided into “Old” New York and “New” New York.

In Old New York, one can still see the brick-and-mortar houses built by German Mennonites, a Protestant sect, who arrived here a century after Russia annexed Crimea for the first time.

Or, to be more exact, after the Russian Empire conquered in 1783 the Khanate of Crimea, the mostly Muslim state that ruled the Black Sea peninsula and adjacent lands covered with fertile black soil and plenty of coal and iron ore underneath it.