The looming battle for Chasiv Yar
In the eastern Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar, seven-year-old Symon was clinging to a chocolate bar and a packet of biscuits he had just been given by an aid worker. With the sound of each new shell landing – and they were coming every few seconds – his small body shook and shivered in sympathetic rhythm. Eventually he buried his head against his mother, Svetlana’s, coat and closed his eyes. ‘We are terrified’, said Svetlana, a 47-year-old who worked as a chemist in a laboratory before the war. ‘Of course we want to leave.’ Using back roads, and in a borrowed helmet and flak jacket, I visited Chasiv Yar this