Saltivka, in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, has been ruthlessly bombed by the Russians.

Amid the rubble, some residents are struggling to survive.

When Russian shells began raining down on Saltivka in February, life on the apartment blocks counted in the neighborhood was like a lottery - one block was hit while the other escaped.

Inside each building, the occupants of each apartment survived as if by luck - one apartment was reduced to ashes, the other was intact, reports the BBC, reports Telegrafi.

As the bombing of Kharkiv continued - as in March, April, May and June - fewer and fewer buildings in Saltivka were spared.

Now the neighborhood is a ghost town.

Everywhere you look today, the tide of protectionist sentiment is flowing.

On the sides of the buildings there are cracks in many floors.

There are regular circular holes in the roof, where the shells fell but did not explode.

There are personal items scattered in the streets between the buildings - pulled out of the apartments upstairs with terrible force.

And the shells are still falling.

Remains of what was an apartment block in Saltivka.

Everywhere you look, there is destruction

When they land, they shake the ground and make a rumble causing buildings to 'jump' and echo through green and empty spaces and playgrounds, reports the BBC.

The various shells and rockets have distinct sounds and leave distinct chunks of pieces that the natives are already distinguishing.

They include the remains of widely banned cluster munitions and misguided missiles.

None of the guns can be accurately targeted, so nowhere in the neighborhood is there security.

When there is no shelling, Saltivka is silent.

"Saltivka is like Chernobyl now," said Serhiy Khrystych, 44, as he washed his face with water from a plastic bottle in Building 80. "Chernobyl certainly had radiation, but it was not destroyed.

"We do not have radiation, but everything is destroyed like this," he said.

"It is impossible to live here."

However there are still people living in the area who live in buildings without gas or water, in some places only one or two residents in a block of 60 or more dwellings in it.

Electricity was turned on again in some buildings last week and some people have returned from subway stations or other shelters.

But it is still a small part of the population of pre-war Saltvika.

At its peak, this neighborhood - a Soviet-era development for the city's industrial workers and their families - was home to somewhere between 500,000 and 800,000 people.

It was full of family life.

"It was a beautiful area, there was a beautiful park and there was light in the park, benches and a fountain," said Tamara Koneva, a 70-year-old pensioner who lives on the first floor of a half-ruined building.

"Now there is nothing left," she said.

Tamara sits in her bedroom in her half-ruined building.

"It was beautiful here," she said.

"Now there is nothing left"

Tamara's husband died in March, a month after the invasion.

"Because of stress," she said.

So she is mostly just in their apartment, and almost alone in the building.

"I miss him," she said.

"I do not even want to go out."

Another person is in the Tamara building - a 53-year-old car mechanic named Valeriy Ivanovych, who has lived there for 20 years.

His apartment has survived little, so far, with the exception of small pieces of debris that shattered glass and pierced the washing machine, kitchen cupboard and bedroom wall like bullets.

"Hardly anyone lives in this building anymore, it's just a couple, a man, a woman and me," said Valeriy.

"People sometimes come to collect things, but they do not stay."

Valeriy Ivanovych looks out of the window of his apartment.

Out of the 18 apartments on this side of the palace, only two people remain

The flats on the side of the stairs of Tamara and Valeriy were relatively undamaged, but a shell hit the other side directly and the apartment opposite Valeriy was just ashes, crumbling concrete and burnt items.

"Maybe the building will have to be demolished, because the second part of it is destroyed and the third part is very destroyed," said Valeriy.

He has no job now and has nowhere else to go.

"This is my home, I have lived here all my life," he said.

"It will be a great sadness if all these houses are destroyed because I am very used to this place."

View from a ruined apartment in Saltivka.

Many of them have turned into a little more than ashes

Without the services available in their apartments, some of the residents still living in Saltivka have set up makeshift outdoor kitchens where they cook food and sit together for company.

Once a day, volunteers from the World Central Kitchen food charity enter neighborhoods and distribute food in styrofoam boxes.

"Saltivka is a desert now," said Leon Petrosyan, a 50-year-old engineer who was carefully driving a black Volga around the rubble in order to disperse the food.

"The people who have remained here have nowhere else to go," he said.

"They are trapped."

Food distribution volunteer Leon Petrosyan smokes a cigarette.

"People here have nowhere else to go," he said.

"They are trapped"

Leon stopped for a break and lit a cigarette.

Food deliveries are a lifeline for the few residents in Saltivka.

There are no shops open now and for many it is the only meal they eat every day.

Serhiy Zhuravliov, a 51-year-old lifelong resident of Saltivka who was helping deliver food, said he had stayed in the neighborhood throughout the occupation and the heaviest fighting nearby, when Ukrainian troops were stationed in apartment buildings. and when the front line was on the doorstep.

"It simply came to our notice then.

"Later we got used to the sound of shelling," he said.

"Now we do not sleep without that noise."

Larisa looks out of her hallway on the 16th floor.

She is worried that the building will collapse

Above Leon and Serhiy as they smoked, was a 16-story tower destroyed and burned by direct blows.

On the 16th floor, resident Larisa Enina was looking carefully from her hallway toward the open space, through a gap where once was part of the wall.

About 15 people were left in the 143-apartment building, Larisa said.

The apartment she shares with her husband and daughter was relatively undamaged, except for the shards in the window.

"The apartment near our apartment was completely burned and ours remained intact," she said.

"It is a miracle".

Larisa, however, was worried about something else.

This because there were large cracks in the walls of the 11th floor, according to her and she thought the building could collapse.

"It is dangerous to stay on the balcony now," she said.

/ Telegraphy /