‘They usually fire in the morning but I do not fear death. We are in God’s hands’

The districts in the north of Kharkiv are ghost towns. Closest to the Russian lines, they’ve been pounded by rockets and artillery since February 24.

On a street with the very Soviet name “Heroes of Labour”, a burnt-out van and smashed glass surrounds one housing block. Some windows have been boarded up, but many are just left shattered, the wind blowing in. The low thud of artillery to the north is almost constant. And yet there are still six people living on this stair.

Yulia, 32, shows the way to the basement. It’s a precarious scramble down makeshift steps in almost total darkness, through a warren of rooms full of spare furniture, tools and water bottles.

In the last dimly-lit room, she’s set up house. Misha, her eight-year-old son, is curled up on his camping bed, watching something on a phone. Behind him the heating pipes and valves for the building run along the wall.

They’ve spent most of their time in this basement for more than two months.

“They [Russia] usually fire in the morning,” Yulia says, adding sarcastically, “Like – ‘Good morning’!”

“At first there were hysterics, fear, but then we got used to it,” she adds. “And, really, over the last week it’s been much quieter – till today, that is.”

In February, when the Russian army was massing on the border just a stone’s throw from Kharkiv, Yulia did want to leave.

“But it didn’t work out,” she said, “and then, after the invasion, it became too scary to go out.

“Where would we go, anyway? And, yes, you can leave, but then a time comes when you have to come back and start all over again,” she says. “So you gradually just get used to it.”

Misha should be in school but instead is spending his life in the dark. Next to his bed is a drawing in felt-tip: Misha and Yulia’s block of flats, surrounded by a rainbow, with an angel hovering above. “God save and protect us!” it reads.

He is a keen chess player with an impish smile. When asked if he gets scared by the bombing, he replies “of course”, laughing at the silly question.

Yulia has done everything she can to make the room nice for her and her son. There are piles of blankets, toys, and a computer monitor set up to play music. Misha’s school books are lying open on a little table, and Yulia has a makeshift kitchen at the back: tins of food, huge containers of water.

“Thank God, we have this humanitarian aid delivered,” she says. “Yes, we’re fine here, just sitting tight. The boiler room is here, it’s nice and warm. And if you want to create coziness, you can do it anywhere.”

She also has her manicurist’s tools laid out on a bench, and says a few clients still come by to get their nails done.

Leaving Misha, we climb back upstairs, blinking in the bright sunshine of the courtyard. No sooner have we stepped outside than a series of rumbling explosions come from the north. It’s outgoing fire, but impossible to ignore. Yulia, though, is unfazed. “I don’t have any fear of death,” she says calmly, lighting a cigarette. “We are in God’s hands.”