KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP). It was afternoon, a residential neighborhood, a time to get errands done. But there is nothing routine about life near the front line in Ukraine.
Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city and a short drive from the Russian border, lives with the low thunder of distant artillery and the sickening booms of shells exploding 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, the shelling caught her.
She was one of three bodies on the littered ground.
One body appeared unrecognizable. A second, with a torn yellow dress and a blue slipper blown off, lay beside a splintered wooden bench. Next to it, there was a box of half-eaten fruit, cherries and apples, speckled with blood.
Inside a purse left on the bench, a mobile phone rang.
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 first responders waited to close the body bag. “She is dead. Get up.”
“Don’t you understand?” his father asked.
“What don’t I understand?” the son said. “This is my mother. Dad, please. Dad, please.”
