‘We had nowhere else to go’: The Ukrainians living underground in war-torn Lyman

Months after the Russian occupation ended in their town, residents still spend much of their time in darkness, watching and waiting in case enemy forces return. Alex Horton and Anastacia Galouchka report

Zoya in her basement storage cupboard-turned-bedroom at the block known as the Triangle (Heidi Levine/Washington Post)

Before this city was occupied by Russian soldiers and the buildings crumbled to rubble and ash under a rain of steel and fire, life was good for residents in the medley of apartment buildings known as the Triangle.

Grannies sat on benches and admired their grandchildren on the courtyard playground, and residents hauled vegetables from the small but bountiful community garden, even as the Russians drew near to this small city in the eastern Donetsk region.

This life splintered apart last spring, on 25 April, when a missile or bomb fell from the sky and landed by the jungle gym, blowing out windows and leaving a massive crater. A seven-year-old girl whose family fled from another part of the city to live with her grandmother was just getting to the shelter when the strike occurred. The girl and a small black dog she held in her hands were crushed when a wall collapsed, residents said. She died on the way to a hospital.