Both were in need of an embrace, the 12-year-old boy standing in the debris that was once his home. And the matted cat that wandered into the rubble. The child picked up the animal and they clutched one another amid the death and destruction of Chernihiv, a northern Ukrainian city besieged by Russian forces.
Shells and bombs that rained down on the city for weeks have reduced its buildings and neighborhoods to rubble. An elderly woman collects wooden planks in a street now gutted of homes. One explosion left an enormous crater in the ground alongside decimated homes that appears dozens of feet deep.
