Sergei took his last breath in his small veranda, on the first floor of a building in Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, the target of Russian bombardments.
Through the broken windows, a passer-by would only see the face of her mother, Nadezhda Aleksandrova, overcome by pain.
But at her feet, Sergei is lying, as if he had fallen asleep, and the blood begins to dry on his pale face. He was 38 years old and was smoking at the window when a shell fell a few meters from him.
A shard of the missile is planted in the ground in front of the apartment, among the daffodils.
“The window broke and I saw him lying in a pool of blood,” Aleksandrova, 68, told AFP, choking with grief. “I told him we should leave. He told me we should stay.”
Three men arrive to take Sergei’s body away. They wrap him in a flowery sheet, quickly soaked in his blood, and hoist him aboard a van.
Then they clean their hands with fruity-smelling antiseptic gel and close the doors of the vehicle.
– An infant killed –
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the withdrawal of his troops from the kyiv region and northern Ukraine, in order to concentrate the forces of the Russian army in the east of the country.
Kharkiv, in the northeast, experiences deadly shelling almost daily.
On Friday, an AFP team went to the Industrialniï district, the target of several missile attacks, just 22 kilometers from the Russian border.
Ten people were killed, including a seven-month-old infant, and 35 others injured, according to local authorities.
The still smoldering remains of three missiles are still visible: two are planted in the ground, very close to a residential building, and the last lies in a garbage can not far away.
Nearly a dozen craters the size of a football were also visible in the area where AFP was able to go during a short visit. In a square, near a bench, spurts of blood recall the drama.
Volodymyr Jyrnov, 54, said he rescued an injured woman, who was then taken care of by the emergency services. He does not know if she survived her injuries.
“These hands save people,” he says, recalling how he used his belt and a piece of his shirt to stop the bleeding.
His face still marked by shock, he steps forward to shake the hand of an AFP journalist before withdrawing it. He has just noticed that they are still stained with blood.
– Toboggan riddled with impacts –
After the explosions, a man drives up, wiping his damaged windshield with a rag before fixing his shattered headlights with a piece of tape.
Nearby, a slide on a children’s playground is riddled with impacts. The inhabitants compare the pieces of shells having hit their houses.
All around, the windows are gutted.
Sergey Belov, 40, was also smoking at his upstairs window when he narrowly avoided a shrapnel shard. A chance that his neighbor, also named Serguiï, did not have. The cellars of the building are not solid enough to hide in, he reveals.
The inhabitants can only “pray so that the bombs do not fall on them”, breathes Serguiï.