https://static01.nyt.com/images/2022/04/18/world/18ukraune-cluster-50/merlin_205512804_57332ab9-cd9f-4a75-aaab-ba4100db2eff-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp
Lubov Dvoretska, 62, a biology teacher whose husband was killed in a bombing. Her neighbors buried his body in the garden behind their house. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Lubov Dvoretska, 62, lost her husband, Olexandr, during the shelling of Husarivka by Ukrainian forces at the end of March, just days before Russian troops retreated from there.
“Ones are shooting this way, others another way,” she recounted. “My God, everything is thundering. And on March 10, it was said that half of Husarivka had left for Chepelivka. Pack up and leave because it will get worse. And then I left.”
Ms. Dvoretska fled, but her husband, Olexandr, stayed behind to tend their livestock. Later, residents told her that Olexandr was injured in a mortar strike on March 22 and most likely died the next day.
“He was discovered dead in the house on the 23rd, and on the 24th they could barely reach me on the phone to notify me,” she said. “Just as he was, in the same clothes, he was buried inhumanly, like an animal.”
Another man, Volodymyr Strokov, was killed during the shelling on March 22, residents said.
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A resident handing an emergency responder a piece of shrapnel at a bombing site in Bezruky, on the outskirts of Kharkiv, on April 7. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Before the war, Husarivka had a population of just over 1,000. It is now down to around 400, after hundreds packed what they could and left. Ukrainian forces retook the village around March 26. Now, the village — about three miles from the front line near the eastern city of Izium — is attacked daily by both Russian artillery and aircraft, residents said.
Through tears, Ms. Dvoretska pointed to where her neighbors had buried her husband in a raised dirt grave in their backyard, marked with a homemade wooden cross.
“I never thought it would happen this way,” she yelled. “It never got in my head that I will be left alone at my old age. Alone.”
Thomas Gibbons-Neff reported from Husarivka, Ukraine, and John Ismay from Washington. Natalia Yermak contributed reporting from Husarivka.
Thomas Gibbons-Neff is the Kabul bureau chief and a former Marine infantryman. @tmgneff
John Ismay is a Pentagon correspondent in the Washington bureau and a former Navy explosive ordnance disposal officer. @johnismay
A version of this article appears in print on April 19, 2022, Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline