‘We have come to protect you,’ Russian soldiers told Ukrainian man they’d shot

Eduard Lysovysk in his hospital bed in Bila Tservka, south of Ukraine, where he was taken after a week without treatment. Photograph: Anton Skyba/The Observer

Two sleepless days after Eduard Lysovysk was carried into a basement bomb shelter, his thigh bone shattered by a Russian sniper’s bullet, soldiers from the army who had shot him came to visit.

Heavy shelling outside had pinned him and dozens of neighbours into the cramped dugout, where he would spend a week in agony, waiting for a chance to flee the neighbourhood he once called home.