Another ceasefire?
Today, Sunday, I had an unexpected day off. (It's usually hard to fill the rota on weekends.) Whilst sitting on my verandah with a cup of tea, instead of a siren being the first sound I heard, as normal, it was the daily 9 o'clock clanging sound that precedes a nationwide moment of silence, to honour civilians and military personnel killed in the ongoing war with Russia. But the first siren sounded at 09:48. Yesterday there were still lots of air raid alerts but short ones, almost nervy, as if it was expected that the 3-day ceasefire, 9 - 11 May, wouldn't last. Unsurprisingly, it didn't. During the evening the Russian army launched a drone strike on a nine-story building in the Industrial District of Kharkiv. Fortunately, no-one was seriously injured. Sadly, on the same day, one of the people injured in a missile strike on Merefa, Kharkiv Oblast (Region) on 4 May, died in hospital, bringing the death toll to nine. 35 other people were injured and the impact of the miss...