A Ukrainian city celebrates despite the cold and the Russians

The guns are now silent in North Saltivka, a neighbourhood on the north-eastern edge of Kharkiv, but war is everywhere to be seen. Charred, splintered white apartment blocks stick out from the soil like bones in a burial ground. Trenches still cut across play areas and football fields. Among the ruins Yevgeny Zubatov, 32, is walking with his seven-year-old son Danya. He has come to pay respects, he says, to the apartment he abandoned when war broke out on the morning of February 24th. He makes the trip every weekend, bringing a thermos flask so he can drink a cup of tea within his own four walls—or three and a half, as they are now. He has brought some chocolates this time, a nod to the upcoming holiday season. But he says he is in little mood to celebrate. “My New Year is just about my son. We are carrying on for him.”Mr Zubatov’s melancholic mood is not unusual in Ukraine’s second city, which lies just 35km (22 miles) from the Russian border. Russian artillery has been pushed back beyond firing range of the city, but it is unclear whether Kharkiv will ever return to its pre-war life. A local enterprise now makes flak jackets for small children (pictured), to wear during evacuation. At least half of the pre-war population of 2m has left, including the vast majority of the 300,000 who lived in North Saltivka.