Under the late spring sun on Saturday afternoon, these were some of the sounds to be heard in Kharkiv’s Shevchenko Park: birds chirruping; young couples chatting and laughing over iced coffees; tinny pop music playing from speakers mounted on lamp-posts; pensioners gossiping on the benches; and, at 11 minutes to three, a prolonged explosion that reverberated in the chest like a rumble of thunder.
A few miles away, in a quiet residential suburb, a glide bomb launched from a Russian fighter jet had smashed into a courtyard. As the resulting boom reached the park, people stopped in their tracks for a split second, then continued on, as if nothing had happened.
