‘Bomb shelters, battlefronts’: Ukrainians resist Russian assaults | Gallery News

In a Kyiv basement converted into a nursery, Svitlana Stetsiuk plays tenderly with a baby, one of 19 surrogate babies whose non-Ukrainian biological parents are outside the country.

These children of Ukrainian surrogate mothers, some just days old, are stuck in this makeshift bomb shelter, waiting for their parents to pick them up, from a war zone. Their caretaker nurses cannot leave the shelter because of the constant shelling by Russian troops.

In the besieged and battered port city of Mariupol, Russian forces have pushed deeper and heavy fighting has shut down a major steel plant as local authorities pleaded for more Western help.

If Russia is able to take Mariupol, the scene of some of the war’s worst suffering, that would be a major battlefield advance, as its army is still largely bogged down outside big cities more than three weeks into the land invasion.

In the western city of Lviv, Ukraine’s cultural capital formerly known for its elegant architecture, military veterans train dozens of civilians to use firearms and grenades.

“It’s hard, because I have really weak hands, but I can manage it,” said 22-year-old Katarina Ishchenko.

All around the country, there are scenes of resistance and determination as Ukrainians put up a fight against Russia, which has faced heavier-than-expected losses on the battlefield since it first invaded.