The espresso machine was warming up and Liliia Korneva was counting cash at the coffee shop in Kharkiv where she works when a powerful Russian bomb detonated nearby, sending up a deafening explosion and knocking her to the floor.
“When a rocket hits, within three to four hours, all the glass is cleaned up, all the central roads are cleared,” said Andrii Dronov, the 39-year-old deputy chief of the Kharkiv Fire Department.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, last week became the highest ranking Kremlin official to signal that Moscow has designs on seizing Kharkiv, saying it “plays an important role” in President Vladimir V. Putin’s stated desire to create a “sanitary zone” along the Russian border.
The crater in the courtyard outside Ms. Korneva’s coffee shop, for instance, has been filled, shattered windows boarded up, splintered trees cut down and a playground repaired.
Last week, New York Times journalists traveled around the city with paramedics and firefighters, observing daily life and talking to residents and local officials.
Dina Chmuzh, a local artist, paints the words of Ukrainian poets past and present on the wooden boards that now cover so many blasted out windows.
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