KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) – She had gone outside to feed the cats when the shelling started.
It was afternoon, a residential area, a time to do some shopping. But there is nothing routine about living near the front lines in Ukraine.
Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city and a short drive from the Russian border, is alive with the low thunder of distant artillery and the sickening booms of shells that explode much closer to home.
Natalia Kolesnik, like other residents, learned to live with the risks. Then, in a grassy courtyard on a hot and sweaty Thursday, she was struck by the shelling.
She was one of three bodies on the strewn ground.
One body seemed unrecognizable. A second, in a tattered yellow dress and a blown-off blue slipper, lay beside a shattered wooden bench. Next to it was a box of half-eaten fruit, cherries and apples, smeared with blood.
A cell phone rang in a bag left on the couch.
Kolesnik was nearby.
Her husband, Viktor, arrived in shock. He didn’t want to let her go. He stroked her head.
“Dad, that’s it,” his son Olexander said, watching as the first responders waited to close the body bag. “She’s dead. Get up.”
“Do not you understand that?” his father asked.
“What don’t I understand?” said the son. “This is my mother. Daddy, please. Daddy, please.”
Kneeling, Viktor embraced what was left of his wife, an arm around her shoulder, his stubbly chin pressed against the grit on her face.
He picked up her left hand, put it back down, and covered it with his.
The pleading continued. Viktor again pushed his son’s hand away.
“Daddy, go.”
“I can not go.”
“Look, you’re covered in blood. People have to carry her away.”
Viktor started to close the body bag himself, after which the first responders took over.
As neighbors watched from the edge of a field and the authorities began their now routine hunt for shrapnel, Viktor was left alone on a bench to cry.
“Why were these people killed? Terrible. I’m tired,” said neighbor Sergey Pershin. “Every night we wake up ten times and wait for them to start firing. What are these motherfuckers doing? Here are residential buildings. Why are they shooting here? There’s nothing here.”
It was just one day in Kharkov, where hundreds have died in 19 weeks of war. As Russia reassembles its forces to try to capture more territory in eastern Ukraine, we can safely say there will be more deaths.
On Sunday, the United Nations human rights agency had determined that at least 4,889 civilians had died in Ukraine since the Russian invasion, a number that likely represented a huge undercount.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war between Russia and Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
