Residents of Ukrainian city of Kharkiv pause for breath as Russian forces recede

Kharkiv is a city that can now breathe, but not necessarily relax. 

Ukrainian forces have pushed invading forces back toward the Russian border over the last week and a half, relaxing a death grip that has threatened the country's second-largest city since the earliest days of the war. 

The streets and sidewalks are lined with craters and ruined buildings, while some shops have been simply shredded by shellfire, especially in Saltivka, the now-wasted suburb on the city's northeastern corner.

Many still-traumatized residents are struggling to find what normal will look like, and are wondering if they ever will ever succeed in finding it. 

"No one knew what was the situation, where to hide, where to run, because the shelling was all over the city," said Ludmilla Ivanivna, the head nurse on the adult surgery wing of the Kharkiv City Clinical Hospital, known as the Meshchaninov.

She and her colleagues seemed physically and emotionally exhausted on Saturday as they recounted the nearly three harrowing months of relentless warfare as Russian armoured columns tried to bludgeon their way into the city. 

Elsewhere in Ukraine, hospitals have been targeted with abandon by Russian artillery and missiles, although Moscow denies it has such a policy. The staff at the Meshchaninov were taking no such chances and had stretchers lined up in the corridor ready to move patients away from windows that would have blown should it have been struck.

All along those dimly lit hallways, you find lives forever altered.

"I [have] lived in the hospital [for] 80 days. Two-and-a-half months. From the first day to this day," said Dr. Oleksandr Dukhovsky, one of the hospital's trauma surgeons and its head of pediatrics.

Other staff members and even patients have done the same — some out of a sense of duty, but in other cases because they have nowhere to go.

When Russian shells hit civilians lining up for aid in Kharkiv in March, it was Dukhosky who was treating them, and sometimes under the most horrific conditions.

"It is very emotional to talk about," Dukhovsky said after a long pause. 

On March 6, at an apartment block one kilometre up the road from the hospital, a shell landed almost on top of the building. The resulting explosion blew in the windows and sent the kitchen door flying toward 18-year-old Diana Zinchenko.

The young woman's face and head were smashed. When she arrived at the hospital, Dukhosky struggled to save her through two operations and facial reconstruction.