A grave dug into the sidewalk reflects the horrors of living in the Ukrainian city of Chiversk.

A grave dug into the pavement in front of one of the few buildings still standing after Russia’s relentless offensive against the city of Sivarsk in eastern Ukraine reveals a devastated atmosphere.

Siversk breathes fear and death. This is the middle part of the fight. Russian troops are on the outskirts of the municipality, while Ukrainian artillery fires incessantly.

The streets are full of large craters, buildings destroyed or charred by fire, a dog and a cat playing around a hole embedded in the ground.

Through the broken windows of the buildings’ first floors are reminders of the lives its inhabitants hastily left behind: wardrobes, family photos and overturned armchairs.

The grave of Oleksy, who was born on February 19, 1976 and died on June 30, 2022, was quickly dug up next to a cultural center in Chiversk. A grave is a small earthen mound covered with two concrete barriers.

There someone left a bouquet of yellow flowers and an inscription on a card: “Rest in peace, my brother, we will love you, we will remember you, we will mourn you.”

“What can I say? He was sitting in front of his house and there were two missiles that killed him instantly,” said Valerie, a 56-year-old neighbor. Nothing is known about the victim. Chiverskil cannot stay in one place for more than 15 minutes.

Missiles fly over Siversk

Missiles fired by both Russians and Ukrainians fly over the city.

Despite everything, some wander the streets on bicycles or on foot, with an inscrutable expression of whether they are truly afraid.

“I definitely want to leave, but I have a 90-year-old mother who told me she will die here and I can’t leave her,” says Oleksandre, 60.

“Here we have our house, it’s a lifetime job, we don’t have money to leave,” explains Angela, a 50-year-old woman.

Braziers have been installed for cooking at the exits of the cellars where civilians once sheltered in this town of about 10,000 inhabitants.

Some, however, dispersed. They waited until the last moment to do it.

The last family left in a vehicle loaded with a refrigerator and a bicycle.

A tattered Ukrainian flag flies over what remains of a flame-blackened building that may have been a workers’ hostel.

An ominous sight of an empty, partially destroyed wooden coffin arrives in front of the nearly destroyed house. Nobody has time to keep the person for whom it is meant.