In the shattered streets of Lyman, a Ukrainian city that has lived through the Russian invasion, months of occupation and last week’s brutal battle to liberate it, evidence of the chaotic and bloody Russian withdrawal and defeat is everywhere.
Emerging from the dugout of a former Russian checkpoint on the outskirts of the Donbas city, a Ukrainian soldier appears clasping a Russian copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which he places next to a discarded water bottle cut in half and filled with rifle ammunition. He points inside to an Orthodox icon left pinned to a wall.
