Explosions rocked the center of Kherson, which was recently liberated from Russian occupation. A quick check with the Ukrainian Rapid Response Team confirmed that it was a Russian shelling and that it was aimed at a tiny settlement that was or was not of strategic importance on the banks of the wide Dnieper.. The suffering that the Russians continue to inflict on the liberated Kherson and its environs, according to a report by The New York Times.

Many daily accounts of the war in Ukraine are grimly monotonous. A city or village is hit by shells and rockets, and a record of the dead and wounded is kept. And the world shrugs and moves on, often overlooking the terrible impact on families and lives..

On that day, Russia fired half a dozen shells at a settlement near Kherson. Immediately after this, the inhabitants rushed back and forth, sometimes in haste, looking for victims, helping the wounded and extinguishing any fire..

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It soon became clear that Dmitry Dudnik died, whose body lay right in the entrance of his mother-in-law Svetlana Zubova's house.. She was getting ready to cook dinner and Mr. Dudnik had just brought her a bar of chocolate to share over tea after the meal, when shells hit the neighborhood.

One exploded in her yard, killing Dmitry Dudnik. When the neighbors ran with buckets of water to put out the flames of two neighboring houses, he lay in a pool of blood on the floor..

38-year-old Dmitry Dudnik worked as a sailor on a cargo ship, but because of the war, his contract was terminated. Just two weeks ago, he sent his wife and two daughters, aged 8 and 13, to stay with their parents in the nearby city of Nikolaev as security around Kherson deteriorated after Russian troops left and began throwing artillery shells into the city.. But he wanted to stay in Kherson to take care of the dogs and chickens in his house next door to his mother-in-law..

Explosions suddenly broke the morning air.

“His last words were: “Mom, here’s a chocolate bar for you,” said Svetlana Zubova..

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Two houses were on fire when firefighters and an ambulance arrived.. A house owner who identified himself as Pavel was trying to fix a bucket of water when flames licked a hole in the roof.. Neighbors ran to his house with buckets of water, while others helped people get loved ones out of damaged houses..

83-year-old Anatoly Anatolyevich leaned against a neighbor's fence when the flames engulfed his house. He was blind and didn't know where his wife was.. Before the shelling, she went to the store.

Firefighters sprayed water on his house until their reservoir was dry.. Asked a resident if there is running water on the street. He was, but there was no water. Kherson is almost without electricity and running water, as the Russians destroyed most of the city's utilities during the retreat. A second truck came to the rescue, but the house was already smashed.

In another heavily damaged house, doctors carried out bedridden 85-year-old Lyudmila, delivering her to a neighbor opposite. Lyudmila was given a neighbor's daughter's room, and her family began taking pictures of the damage to their house, they say, for insurance purposes..

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The wife and parents of Dmitry Dudnik arrived from Nikolaev, screaming and crying, rushed to his body, where he was still lying across the threshold. His wife wept beside him as the dog circled under his feet..

\? Why do you? - his mother Irina shouted into the sky.

The ambulance staff refused to pick him up, telling the family they needed to call the morgue..

“I asked him to leave,” his father Victor said, “even this morning. He said " But who needs all this now?

The police arrived to fix the death.. Svetlana Zubova called the mortuary numbers given to her by law enforcement officers, but the first number did not work, and the person who answered the second said that he could not go to Kherson. Then the mobile account ran out of money.

In the end, the brigade did appear to pull out the corpse of a man..

Walking around the yard, Svetlana Zubova threw bomb fragments from the path.

“I don’t know what to do now,” she said, “how to live on.”.

When the fuss subsided, the small community along the river seemed an undeserved, even pointless, target for Russian shells, as there was no sign of Ukrainian troops there.. But, perhaps, in this brutal war of indiscriminate Russian violence, this was the essence of.