“Close the window, smoke is getting in,” a policeman yells. Vyacheslav Pavlov and his aged mother stay on the 9th floor in Ukraine’s 2d town Kharkiv and the next-door flat is ablaze after a Russian rocket assault.

The city has not come underneath huge bombardment however is the target of random strikes at any hour, day or night, and they can be lethal.

The Japanese and north-eastern districts are hit the maximum and that is in which 86-year-old Tamara Pavlovna and her son stay on Working Hero Street.

Some 20 condominium towers rise up alongside the street, each 11 tales excessive, surrounded via gardens dotted with swings and slides for youngsters.

Three rockets struck within a few seconds on Friday, just after 4:00 pm.

One destroyed a sex shop on the other side of the street.

A second hit a residential tower and the third left a hole in the ground next to the pavement.

No one was hurt.

Police told the old lady she had to leave her home, with barely time to stuff a few items into a small backpack.

The lift is broken and Pavlovna goes down the stairs wearing a white headscarf.

Outside, she sits waiting on a bench, a little lost and stressed.

“My son has been looking after me for eight years,” she says.

“He does not want to leave and I cannot take the decision alone.

“For a month and a half, the Russians have been bombing here in this district, non-stop.”

The border with Russia is 30 kilometers (18 miles) off, as the crow flies.

At the start of the invasion in late February, Moscow tried to seize control of Kharkiv, in vain. Ukrainian forces repelled the assault several kilometers from the town after bitter fighting.

Ukraine has since retaken several small areas to the southeast, but Kharkiv remains within the reach of Russian artillery.

On Working Hero Street, firefighters have trained water hoses on the blazing apartment, and clouds of black smoke climb skywards.

Next door, Pavlov has duly closed the balcony window and is smoking a cigarette on the landing.

“When the second strike hit the neighboring apartment, the door saved us by blocking the flying glass,” he explains.

Further east on Peace Street, a rocket smashed right into a motel restaurant the preceding night.

Surveillance cameras from a leather-based store across the street timed the strike at 22:02.

In the black and white video pictures, a white fog appears unexpectedly and pieces of the wooden fly as though in a typhoon. The headlights on two nearby cars start to flash.

Most of the restaurant has been destroyed.

In the leather keep, Ivan is knocking nails into planks of timber to seal up the blown-out windows.

“Every pane of glass has been broken, everything is damaged, the door has been ripped off.

“We’ll try and patch it up today to protect the shop. Shell splinters have torn away from the metal-like paper. The whole ceiling came down.”

“This is the ‘Russian world’, he says, refusing to give his full name.

In the car park behind the shop, two representatives of a protestant church arrive carrying bags of supplies for a family. Their seven-year-old child is asked by the churchmen to pray every day.

“My child went to bed at 8:00 pm,” says Yelena, whose apartment is right behind the hotel restaurant.

“At 10 it all started, everything shook,” she recalls.

“There were two strikes, later there were more, we were no longer able to sleep and spent all night in the corridor.

“It was a terrifying night,” she says, black bags under tear-reddened eyes.