The warm spring air is coming to eastern Ukraine. The roads are lined with red tulips, and people are reopening their summer kitchens, small buildings outside traditional homes used to isolate the heat and smells of cooking in the hotter months.

It was in her elderly mother’s wood-frame summer kitchen that Ludmilla, 69, was chatting to her brother Victor, 72, who went by Vitya, in the eastern city of Lysychansk last week. Despite near-constant bombardment from Russian troops just a few kilometers away, they had stayed in their family home since the invasion of Ukraine in late February.

“My brother and I were talking,” said Ludmilla, who asked CNN to use only her first name out of privacy concerns. “All at once, Grads started falling down one by one.” The windows were blown from their frames. “Everything was cracking.”

She recalled the initial shock and confusion. “We’re standing there — my brother’s making the sign of the cross, and I’m shouting. I turned away from him to look at…

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Source: www.cnn.com