The Russian soldiers were scattered in all directions by the shell that reamed them. One was face down on the ground. There was a mass of white and red. The skin of the third and the fourth had been burned, and the fourth had been thrown 130 feet, with the torso mangled and legs twisted backward.
The fight between Ukrainian and Russian forces erupted on a trans-European highway that goes from France to Italy. It is a 24 mile straight shot to the capital.
The battle was over Thursday morning. In the afternoon, a soldier directed traffic around bits of flesh, bone and metal, a tank hauled a burnt-out armored personnel carrier down the highway, and men unloaded a truckload of large caltrops. The corpses were not touched.
This is Ukraine now. Eight years of fighting over the country's eastern region have turned into a vicious war. The city of Kyiv is surrounded. The second-largest city in Ukraine is bombarded with missiles and shells daily. Parts of the east and south have already been taken over by the Russians. A nuclear plant has been attacked and Russian shells have rained on civilians.
More than 1 million people have been turned into refugees. There aren't as many safe places. The Ukrainian winter has shown signs of spring, but snow still falls through columns of smoke and over graves hurriedly dug.
The 500-mile drive from Shchastia in the disputed Donbas region to the capital underscores the challenges facing Moscow.
The wounds were most obvious in eastern Ukraine. Driving through its towns and villages, one finds roads that end.
Go down a street, take a turn, and there is a roadblock, a full-on security barrier, or a checkpoint with stern soldiers admitting no passage. The so-called Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics are just a few miles away.
Two-thirds of the two provinces were cut off from the rest of the country because of Moscow's war on Ukraine. A pensioner in her 60s, she has dealt with that loss.
She lived in Luhansk city, 10 miles away from Shchastia, where many of the city's residents lived. It became her permanent home in the year 2014). The passage used to be a 15-minute jaunt, but now it is an hours-long trek. She hadn't visited her grandmother's grave in Luhansk for two years.
She stood with her husband in gray overalls, an ill-fitting down olive jacket and a black-and-white cap, queueing by a well. The rituals had become a way of life.
This was last month, back in the phase of Russian President Vladimir Putin's plan to invade Ukraine with an estimated 190,000 troops. He would satisfy himself with the declared borders of the two republics if he invaded.
Shchastia was in the crosshairs. But Nikolayevna wouldn't leave.
She said they were worried, but she was afraid to leave because she had nothing.
She remembered better times when this part of the nation was an industrial powerhouse. The war held 16% of the population in dense urbanized areas, but the oblasts cover 9% of the country. The Luhansk power station is one of the many that they grow around. Things changed when fighting started. The power lines were sheared and the water pumping stations were disrupted by the shell.
After the war, many young men left these towns for opportunities elsewhere. The best years for pensioners were during the Soviet era. She reluctantly acknowledged that if the Russians came, it would be easier to visit her Luhansk city again.
It was beautiful, with parks and squares. She said that she liked to walk in the forest. She was too afraid to go off-track because of mines.
She didn't care if a person spoke Ukrainian or Russian, it was a sign of loyalty. Most of the people in Shchastia spoke Russian.
She said she didn't want the parts to be separated.
We don't care about money or salaries. All we care about is peace.
On the morning of Feb. 24, there was a new war. On the first day of the offensive, Shchastia was subsumed by the Russians. The second largest city in Ukraine, which is less than two dozen miles from the northern border with Russia, was chosen as a sanctuary by some who escaped.
The city is mostly Russian-speaking and many have relatives across the border. The capital of the Soviet Ukraine was Kharkiv. There were celebrations in Kyiv when the pro-European protests ousted the president, but there were many in Kharkiv who thought it was a coup. At one point, it was thought that there would be another pro-Russian enclave there.
The bonds were not broken after the war. Many people talked about relatives on the other side. They felt that the government was cutting a link with those they called brothers by forcing them to use Ukrainian and demonizing the Russian language.
It didn't matter to Moscow. In recent days, Russia fired missiles into the city of Kharkiv, in scenes reminiscent of the city's 1941 fight against the Nazis. Alexander, a martial-arts instructor from Kharkiv who gave only his first name for privacy, was perplexed by the ferocious Russian attacks.
He said that it was as if it was to convince a city that they were invaders and aggressors.
Alexander was in a shelter with his family for six days before he was able to leave the city. He spoke Ukrainian, a language that is less comfortable with than Russian.
He said that he responded in Ukrainian to avoid any problems.
It's like a system to determine if you're a friend or foe.
Alexander would navigate a dangerous new world, and with news of Kharkiv being surrounded, others raced toward Kyiv. The internet was still working. There was a way out despite the do-not-pass sign on a few highways.
It took hours, a dash through highways and pothole-scarred backroads that, when night fell, were illuminated only by a dim lamp at a checkpoint or the blaze of the Russian military truck torn in two by Ukrainian forces, a fire crackling out of its center.
The highways were empty. Cars raced nervously with any distant explosion.
For months, the city of gold domes and a grand past located by the Dnieper River was in the eye of a political storm. Right up to the first day of the invasion, Kyiv showed that the storm is calmest at its center.
The Friday before it was, in a shabby but hip capital full of hip bars and hip restaurants now crammed with hordes of not-so-hip journalists quaffing hip-but-tasty cocktails alongside hip-looking Kyivites.
They had trained in the Territorial Defense Force and prepared the guns. People enjoyed a night out. The invasion began with rifles and homemade bombs being handed out. With a Russian convoy waiting 18 miles away, what has the capital become? A waypoint on a scramble? A city on borrowed time? A fortress with an army and ready-insurgents, its boulevards are filled with traps that promise death to those who pass unpermitted?
The curfews descended either way. The war was calmest inside the storm.
The violence was intense near the Ukrainian soldiers stationed on E40 and in the village of Makariv, a few miles away from the capital. Julia, an English teacher for children now turned interpreter, said that on Wednesday, the Ukrainians clawed it back from Russian control, but it remained surrounded on all sides.
Ukrainian troops forced back part of a Russian column that was near the fields and forests.
They are panicking. There were a lot of tanks. She said that the army stopped them and they are now around the city.
Many people said they were determined to protect their homes. Julia, who gave only her first name for reasons of safety, gave a simpler reason why she and her husband were still there.
She was frightened at night. Everyone in the village was working to repel the Russians. An old pensioner in a brown camouflage outfit with a toothless grin and blue eyes was included. They didn't seem to have enough strength to face the attackers.
Julia said that they were pushing them back because it was another way to Kyiv.
The dead Russian soldiers lay in the cold, a hint of snow in the air. The battle had ended. There were more to come. The sounds no one wants to hear are moving closer. There was a heart without a body further up the road. It was not clear from which soldier it had come.
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