The newborn, peeping out of a pink blanket at a hospital on the north bank of Ukraine’s Dnieper River, may never see his grandparents back home in the Russian-occupied south.

Her mother fled to the relative safety of government-held Zaporizhzhia to ensure the baby was born a citizen of the country the Russians invaded eight months earlier.

But her grandparents stayed behind and unreachable on the opposite side of the bank.

“Maybe it’s too late for her to come out,” lamented 19-year-old Anastasia Skachko, while stealing glances at her as-yet-unnamed girl.

“I don’t even want them to try. The streets are all either mined or under fire.”

A Ukrainian counter-offensive, with the Russians abandoning most of the captured land north of the vast war zone, has reached the strategically important south.

And the great Dnieper River, flowing through the fighting-devoured country, forms a natural new front, dividing families and halting the Ukrainian advance.

Russia’s disheartened troops are clinging to the southern Kherson region – a land bridge giving the Kremlin access to the annexed Crimea peninsula – and shelling the advancing Ukrainians with renewed force.

The fighting is destroying riverside towns and blocking escape routes that families could somehow still use in the early stages of the war.

Skachko said she was able to reach her mother via WhatsApp to let her know she is now a grandmother.

But the phone she reached began with the Russian international dialing code +7 instead of the Ukrainian +38.

The Russians have severed existing lines from the Ukrainian system to consolidate their authority and disrupt the flow of messages.

“It’s hard to say how she’ll ever see the little one,” Skachko said.

“We both understand that. But neither of us wanted to talk about it on the phone.”

The martial law being imposed by the retreating Kremlin forces over countries still claimed by Russia makes daily life even more unpredictable.

Russia has effectively sealed the last checkpoint in the south to prevent people fleeing to government-controlled countries.

Some are taken from the front to areas under tighter Russian control – a process Ukrainians liken to forced deportation.

The handful of people who managed to talk their way past the soldiers and reached the town of Zaporizhia described life back home as an open prison.

Reporters can only visit the region as part of scheduled Kremlin tours.

“There are soldiers with dogs and machine guns on every corner,” said Oleksandra Boyko from Melitopol after escaping with her own baby.

“Most of them are Chechens.”

The Kremlin has relied on Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s personally trained army to control part of the conquered country.

Those who fled described her as the most lawless of all the invading forces they had encountered.

“The guys from (neighboring) Dagestan are a bit nicer, but Kadyrov’s men are just brutal,” said Natalia Voloshyna from Berdyansk.

But many described the psychological pressures of the invasion as even more painful than acute security fears.

All the women AFP spoke to said that the Kremlin-installed rulers only hire or help people who give up their Ukrainian citizenship and apply for Russian one.

“They tell you either you work with us or you get nothing. I told them no straight away,” Voloshyna said.

“They don’t necessarily touch you. But then you live without salary, without help.”

Boyko said her family had been offered “huge payments” if she would register their four-month-old child as a Russian citizen.

“I said no on principle. I am Ukrainian. She should be Ukrainian,” said the native of Melitopoli.

“But there are people who agree, because there is almost no work and they will not hire you without a Russian passport,” she said.

“If there is nothing to eat, what can you do?”