A Ukrainian city celebrates despite the cold and the Russians

The guns are now silent in North Saltivka, a neighbourhood on the north-eastern edge of Kharkiv, but war is everywhere to be seen. Charred, splintered white apartment blocks stick out from the soil like bones in a burial ground. Trenches still cut across play areas and football fields. Among the ruins Yevgeny Zubatov, 32, is walking with his seven-year-old son Danya. He has come to pay respects, he says, to the apartment he abandoned when war broke out on the morning of February 24th. He makes the trip every weekend, bringing a thermos flask so he can drink a cup of tea within his own four walls—or three and a half, as they are now. He has brought some chocolates this time, a nod to the upcoming holiday season. But he says he is in little mood to celebrate. “My New Year is just about my son. We are carrying on for him.”