Oksana Brin is weeping quietly as her father’s body is exhumed from his garden. A neighbour is rushing her family out of the house after finding an unexploded bomb in a bedroom, while another is staring at a torn-apart building he once called home, and wondering how he has survived, though his mother was severely injured.
This is Novoselivka after weeks of fighting and occupation by the Russians. Most of the village is no longer standing: swathes of smashed bricks, timber and glass lie on roads pitted with cavernous craters where massive bombs have been dropped. The village is just outside Chernihiv, 45 miles from the border with Belarus, and represents a key strategic location that the Kremlin needed to capture in order to secure its supply lines and launch an all-out assault on Kyiv, 91 miles to the south.
