Eight-year-old Andrii and his six-year-old brother Maksym’s wooden fort is covered with cloth netting.<\/p>\n
Protection, they said, from the drones fired from Russia.<\/p>\n
The children, who live just 15 kilometres from the Russian border in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, play with plastic guns.<\/p>\n
They scamper through abandoned trenches and the charred shells of armoured vehicles, and keep watch from their makeshift fort.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The brothers hang out and play at the makeshift fort with the few other children left at their frontline village. (Reuters: Violeta Santos Moura)<\/p>\n
When fighting intensifies, their mother Varvara Tupkalenko takes them back to the family’s apartment in nearby Kharkiv, the regional capital.<\/p>\n
But Ukraine’s second city itself is a major target<\/a>, and the swarms of drones that pound it at night terrify the boys.<\/p>\n “The kids keep crying, asking to come back to the village,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ms Tupkalenko said. Kharkiv is among the cities that face regular drone and missile bombardments.\u00a0 (AP: Andrii Marienko)<\/p>\n Europe’s largest land conflict since the Second World War is now in its fourth year and does not appear to be easing.<\/p>\n The rhythm of attacks has been increasing in recent months since diplomatic efforts<\/a> to end the war have stalled.<\/p>\n Air strikes targeting cities are getting worse, with record numbers of drones and missiles flying overhead.\u00a0<\/p>\n Analysts say Russia appears to have a new tactic: launching hundreds of weapons simultaneously from different altitudes and directions, encircling a city.<\/p>\n A firefighter stands on a roof of an apartment building in Kyiv damaged by Russian drone and missile strikes. (Reuters: Valentyn Ogirenko\u00a0)<\/p>\n “This is an obvious escalation of terror by Russia,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in a post to social media.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Hundreds of ‘Shaheds’ [drones] every night, constant strikes, massive attacks against Ukrainian cities.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Over 700 drones in one onslaught\u00a0<\/p>\n Russian forces launched 728 drones and 13 missiles on the night of July 8, according to US think tank the Institute for the Study of War.<\/p>\n Russia fires record drone attack at Ukraine<\/a><\/p>\n Russia has fired a record 728 drones at Ukraine, hours after US President Donald Trump aimed unusually sharp criticism at Russia’s president.<\/p>\n It was the largest combined drone and missile strike of the war and about a 34 per cent increase from the previous record high of 550 earlier this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lutsk, a city that’s home to airfields used by the Ukrainian army, was the hardest hit, according to Mr Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n It lies near the border with Poland in western Ukraine, a region that is a crucial hub for receiving foreign military aid.<\/p>\n Another 10 regions were struck, killing one person in the Khmelnytskyi area, and wounding two in Kyiv, officials said.<\/p>\n Kyiv’s military downed almost all the drones, but some of the six hypersonic missiles caused unspecified damage.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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