It's a weekday afternoon in the emergency wing of one of Kharkiv's busiest hospitals, and the staff are enjoying a moment of relative peace.
In a city that's been bombarded with artillery and missile attacks since the Russian invasion began over three months ago, it's eerily quiet.
Doctors and nurses chat, medical supplies are replenished and the hospital's resident budgerigar — perched in a cage decked out with a blue and yellow ribbon, for Ukraine — is causing the most commotion.
Warning: This article contains details readers might find distressing.
The tranquillity is soon shattered with news of an incoming patient from one of Kharkiv's neighbouring villages.
Nurses scurry down the corridor to assess a young man who has been brought in by ambulance.
Blood flows from a wound near his neck, and his clothes are cut off roughly with scissors as he is prepared for surgery.
"After that, he was brought here by the volunteers.
"His head, neck, and right hand were injured."
Just over two weeks ago, the mayor of Kharkiv declared the battle over his city had been won.
But in recent days, attacks have intensified in the region.
Local officials say that one episode of "dense shelling" of a residential area last Thursday killed nine people, including a five-month-old baby.
"The enemy is again insidiously hitting the civilian population, terrorising them," Kharkiv Governor Oleh Synyehubov said.
For those who survive these attacks, many have life-changing injuries.
Anatoliy Trubnikov has been in hospital for more than a month.
The 63-year-old is a former worker at the Chernobyl power plant. He survived the nuclear meltdown there in 1986 and has now somehow survived an artillery attack in his backyard.
He was struck when he went to feed his dog.
"My wife got wounded as well, and I have no clue if my dog is alive or not.
"My arm and my leg were hanging loose [and there were] pools of blood, the whole yard was in blood.
"I shudder at the memories."
When asked what he thinks of the Russian forces who shelled his village, his eyes fill with anger.
"I would finish him off with my own hands."
Battles rage on as Russian troops enter Sievierodonetsk
On Sunday, several loud explosions were heard in Kharkiv just hours after Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the city.
The president met with troops near the front line on the outskirts of Kharkiv and saw the ruins of destroyed residential buildings in the city, in what was his first appearance outside of Kyiv since the war began.
According to the president's office, he told the soldiers: "You risk your lives for us all and for our country."
Mr Zelenskyy's visit to the front line, on Ukrainian soil, is evidence in itself that Russian troops have not yet been pushed back over the border north of Kharkiv.
Instead, the Russians are digging in within artillery range of Kharkiv, poised to further terrorise the civilians of Ukraine's second-largest city.
This tactic has another key strategic value. Russia is currently focusing on trying to take the city of Sievierodonetsk and gain control of the entire Luhansk region in the east, with Russian forces seizing around 60 per cent of the city by Wednesday.
If Russia can divert Ukrainian forces from that battle to protect Kharkiv, it could help achieve that goal.
As Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London puts it, "there may be occasional offensives to assess the resistance but largely with the aim of fixing Ukrainian forces in place so they are freed up for counterattacks in the Donbas".
'They are truly bastards'
Kharkiv has been one of the worst-hit cities since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Local authorities say approximately 700 civilians have been killed and about 3,000 residential buildings have been damaged by the Russian onslaught.
Russian leaders and officials have repeatedly made the claim they are only targeting military infrastructure in Ukraine. There is no evidence of that in Kharkiv.
Olga Balahovskaya, who escaped her apartment block after it was hit by a rocket, has nothing but contempt for how the Russians have targeted civilians in Saltivka, the residential area of Kharkiv where she has lived for the past 23 years.
"To say it straight forward, they are truly bastards," she says.
"It's not true [that they are targeting military infrastructure]. We don't have anything military in this area, it's a residential area.
"I have no words to say what they have done here.
"They have deliberately been destroying everything by shelling Saltivka for 80 days."
To target civilians is a war crime. Residents of Kharkiv like Olga hope that one day those who ordered and carried out these sustained attacks will pay a price for it.
