A three-kilometer shell shot from the Russian border, the boom of artillery fire rumbled over the village of Kozacha Lopan from both north and south every 10 minutes or less on a day in mid-May.
The central buildings were crumbling, many of them razed to the ground. Most of the homes bore obvious scars from shelling, and almost all had been abandoned in the face of an impending Russian advance across the northern edge of the Kharkiv region.
One of them, still occupied, was surrounded by two gardens of almost surreal loveliness against the backdrop of war and destruction. Sprigs of lavender and the broad leaves of hostas cropped up amid neat little hedges and statuettes.
But the flowers are in a bad way, said Tetyana, who lives there with her husband and adult daughter.
“All the rockets, they’ve thrown the atmosphere out of balance,” she said: A late frost took the cherry buds and the grape vines. And despite a continuous overcast sky, there hasn’t been a real rain.
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