Moscow bomb that dropped in on a birthday party

IT had been a quiet afternoon for Vladimir Tereh before a Russian missile crashed his 62nd birthday celebrations.

The carpenter was drinking tea with old school friend Valentin Usanov, also 62, when an air-raid siren app sounded on his phone. The pair ran for cover in an underground shelter before the projectile buried itself in the earth on March 27 and miraculously failed to explode. He said: ‘It shook the walls of the shelter. For a moment, I thought it was going to collapse on us.’ The shockwave from the impact destroyed the summer house he and his wife Anna built three decades ago in the north-eastern Ukrainian village of Malaya Rogan.

The village was heavily shelled and Mr Tereh fled with his wife to the nearby city of Kharkiv, which was also bombarded.

He returned to his home for the first time on Friday. Some of the 2,600 locals came back to help clear up after the Ukrainian military defused the missile.

Describing his birthday, he said: ‘We were only drinking tea because the Russians had looted all the beer and vodka in the shop opposite. We had no other plans that day apart from a meal with my wife.’

It was a far cry from the barbecue he hosted for villagers last year.