Few cities still in Ukrainian control have been bombed as ferociously and as frequently as Mykolaiv.
A few months ago Russian forces had advanced to within a few miles of the large ship-building port on the Southern Bug river, but in recent weeks Ukrainian counter-offensives have pushed them back, although still within range.
A day doesn’t go by without incoming missiles hitting buildings – universities, houses, council offices, factories, apartments, you name it.
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There seems to be no logic or strategy to what Russia targets, just the gradual elimination of life.
I’ve visited the city several times over this six-month war, and every time the destruction is more evident.
Although it’s not strictly on the frontlines, we always enter taking the same precautions as if it were.
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It’s worse at night. The hours of 3am to 5am can often be vicious. Few sleep through it.
“It’s scary to sleep,” says 69-year-old Tamara Ribova.
“I fell asleep today at half past six in the morning. Terrible.
“I run into the corridor and sit in the corner because there is no place to hide around the windows and the door.
“I run into the corridor and sit. And it’s all banging.
“And when it gets quiet, you go to sleep a little. I sympathise with people in prison.
“I am in a cell. I don’t see people or the outside world.”
‘A ball of fire and dust flew into the bedroom’
Her windows were blown out by an airstrike a few weeks ago – the glass landed on her granddaughter, asleep on the sofa.
She said: “It happened at 6:55am. Such a roar; so fast. It cannot be expressed in words.
“A ball of fire and dust flew into the bedroom through the open door. It lifted me up and threw me on the bed.”
The windows of her second floor apartment are now boarded up with wood – the consequence is that no natural light gets in, so the electricity is always on, costing them money they simply don’t have.
Down the road, we meet Iryna and Lyudmila.
Iryna’s windows are also gone, now covered by plastic sheeting.
“I have no money, I have nowhere to go. Let’s hope there will be electricity,” she tells me with the resignation of someone who doesn’t believe there will be.
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Without proper insulation, people will die
Come the winter, in just a couple of month’s time, the temperatures will be well below freezing here.
It is largely the elderly or unwell left here in Mykolaiv. Without proper insulation, people will die.
We meet people fixing their homes, rebuilding lives blown apart by Russian bombs. Small gestures – repairing the front gate, clearing debris from the yard – are acts of defiance and pride.
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“Every morning we go out on to the street and see who survived the night, and who didn’t,” was one man’s grim dose of reality.
It’s been a hard six months; it could be about to get harder.
