Galina Muzyra moved around her front garden as she cleaned up the mess left by occupying Russian soldiers. “They parked two armoured vehicles on my lawn,” she said, pointing to a flattened blue fence next to her neat vegetable patch. Nearby, amid blackcurrant bushes, was a large crater. Her yellow-painted dacha was perforated with holes.
Shrapnel had wrecked the wooden summer house too. It was a birthday gift from her late husband Nikolai, Muzyra explained. “We don’t understand why the Russians did this. We are a small quiet country. If it wasn’t for our president I don’t know what we would do,” she added, throwing splintered branches and other rubbish on to a spring bonfire.
