In the Donbass, American veterans of the Mozart group play a little war music

A white dust swirls in the empty street, so straight that it seems drawn with a ruler. Despite the night, the heat crushes everything, it’s like being in a western. In fact, it’s a small town – whose name we won’t mention for safety – in the Donetsk region, in the Ukrainian Donbass, not far from the front line with the Russian troops. In the middle of the low buildings stands a hotel, the kind of family establishment with gathered curtains, to which the war gives a strangely quirky air.