Third-grader Maria Shanovska is mulling which toy to pack in her emergency evacuation bag should the Russian forces massing at the border invade her war-shattered town in east Ukraine.
"A family photo, my favourite toy and some food so that I don't get hungry," she tells her mother Natalia as they debate what they would need most should their traumatised country plunge into an even bloodier war.
Natalia knows the pains of war and personal loss. Her building has been hit four times by shells and her flat relies on the whims of a makeshift wood-fired stove. More than 100,000 Russian soldiers have massed near Ukraine's borders in what Washington warns could be a precursor to an all-out invasion designed to reverse Kyiv's steady drift toward the West.Washington has taken the lead in issuing ominous warnings about the prospects of a Russian offensive that could quickly kill tens of thousands of civilians in what would be Europe's gravest conflict since World War II.
But one nurse who refused to give her full name for fear of being reprimanded for her criticism said it was dangerous to move gravely ill patients into bomb shelters.AFP | Aleksey FilippovPatient Lyudmila Isaychenko sounds resigned to her fate. The 73-year-old was hospitalised with a neurological disease and says she will not be cowed into hiding in a basement should the shells start to fall.
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