It isn’t yet dusk, but the sky to the south is darkening with an approaching storm as Denis Dragusevich and Zhenya Kucheryavaya play with their three small boys in a dusty apartment-building playground in Slavyansk. When a loud rumble breaks through the air, their neighbours jokingly wonder if it is “thunder or hail” – a reference to the BM-21 “Hail” rocket launcher that government forces have fired into the city, along with howitzers and mortars.
“The three-year-olds, when the bombing starts, they point to the bathroom. They already know,” Zhenya says, explaining that the familyhides there during the frequent shelling. “In the future, these will be the children of war.”
Alec Luhn 