A building housing a Jewish social welfare center in Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine, was hit by rockets on Tuesday during a barrage that killed at least seven people in the government- held city.

The assistant to the chief rabbi of Mariupol told Jewishnews.com.ua about the situation in the city and the community’s reaction to the tragedy that took place on Saturday.

Jewish leaders in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol are urging their constituents to flee as casualties mount amid shelling by Russian- backed separatists.

The fighting was heavy when Maya and her family fled this summer from Lugansk, Ukraine. When she recently returned after three months in Moscow, her pantry was empty.

For the first time in two decades, no public Chanukah celebration took place this year in the center of Donetsk, Ukraine.

The Latvian-Israeli activist who helped found a Jewish self-defense force in Kiev following last year’s revolution is looking to create a similar organization in the port city of Mariupol, just kilometers behind the front lines of Ukraine’s civil war, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

Yulia, Kostiantyn and their daughter, Valerie, don’t look like a typical refugee family. All well dressed — even the Chihuahua, Micky, wearing a chic dog jacket — they might not seem out of place mingling with Kiev’s oligarchs.

Aside from his long gray beard, the soldier pictured in front of a tank, holding a Kalashnikov assault rifle and wearing heavy camouflage body armor appears indistinguishable from any of his compatriots.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), which has been delivering heating fuel, bedding, and clothing to Jewish communities across the former Soviet Union as part of its annual Winter Relief program, is expanding its efforts in Ukraine in response to a harsh winter as well as the country’s ongoing political and economic turmoil.

LUGANSK, Ukraine — In an unheated synagogue with no running water, a dozen Jews are trying to keep warm as temperatures here veer toward the single digits.