While the bombardment has just taken place, a smell of yeast and bread hangs in the air in the center of Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, hit daily by bombardments by the Russian army.
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This time, the missile set fires to several downtown buildings and destroyed a kitchen that provided free meals to residents of this northeastern town.
Under the blast of the explosion, loaves of bread flew into the street, quickly soaked with water from the fire hoses deployed by the firefighters to extinguish the fire which seized the building.
Two people were killed and 18 others injured in the Russian strike, according to local authorities.
Still in shock, Gennady Vlassov wanders in the street, dazedly observing the fragments of melted metal and plastic. His car, not far from there, was completely destroyed.
He was kneading bread in the voluntary kitchen.
“The explosion was so big that at first we didn’t understand what was happening,” the 52-year-old volunteer told AFP. “It was when the walls started to move that we realized we had to get out.”
Around him, debris paints an absurd scene: a solitary shoe, burnt mannequins from a nearby fabric shop, a plucked chicken carcass, a book from the Harry Potter saga.
Bombings
Kharkiv has been one of the cities in the crosshairs of the Russian army since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he was withdrawing his troops from the kyiv region to concentrate on eastern Ukraine.
21 kilometers from the border with Russia, the city in northeastern Ukraine has been under intense bombardment for several days.
On Friday, ten people were killed and 35 injured by a Russian strike against a residential area of the metropolis.
The day before, the governor of the region, Oleg Sinegoubov, had announced that 503 civilians, including 24 children, had been killed in the Kharkiv region since the start of the Russian invasion.
And Saturday, in the middle of the day, an AFP team heard the regular bursts of artillery fire, while fierce fighting continued between Russians and Ukrainians.
Destruction
In the rubble of the old kitchen, its manager Dmytro Kamykine takes a look around him.
The roof was torn off by the force of the strike. The wall panels lie on the ground.
Fire engines are stationed nearby, their hoses snaking over the asphalt and spraying water inside buildings where smoke is still rising.
A river forms in the street, in the middle of broken bricks and deformed pieces of metal.
Not far away, the carcass of a destroyed car reveals kitchen utensils: frying pans, saucepans, a series of knives.
“Three cars arrived with volunteers. They were seriously injured”, explains Mr. Kamykine, 56 years old.
“Near here, a young man was killed” by the strike, he adds, impassive. “You can see the blood on the asphalt. I ran to him, but he was already dead.