Men waited with flowers for their ladies as evacuees returned by train and later that day russian shelling killed at least nine civilians and nineteen were injured in the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine on May 26, 2022.
russian forces had been pushed back in a Ukrainian counter-offensive and the city had been relatively calm and started coming back to life recently with residents having a false sense of security that it was out of artillery range.
Blood stained the newly reopened metro station and police searched a shelled neighborhood for a 5-month-old baby that went missing after his father was killed and mother hospitalized.
It was reported the body of the child was later found on the roof of a building.
People pack up at the metro station where they have been living and are transported to housing as the city tries to start up the trains again in Kharkiv, Ukraine on May 22, 2022.
Most have nowhere to go as their homes were destroyed in the war, or they are still fearful of possible shelling and traumatized by their experiences during constant bombardment.
Mariia Shvets, 70 years old weeps as she prepares to leave the metro station. She was evacuated from Rus’ki Tyshky a few days before and had finally reached relative safety and now she again has fears. ‘It was very scary – very,’ she wept speaking of the war. ‘My heart jumps out of my chest. I was with my daughter and tried to sleep, but the sounds of explosions do not let me sleep. So I sleep on the subway. We are all hard workers – we have been working all our lives. And now they began to plant potatoes, and shells fly over their heads. We hid in the cellar – the earth trembles, crumbles from the ceiling.’
Source: Carol Guzy/Zuma Press
