The explosions, orders of magnitude more powerful than regular artillery shells, shake the ground where the two police officers lay prone. Getting back on his feet, Oleksii Kharkivskyi, the boisterous young police chief of the border town of Vovchansk in Kharkiv Oblast, climbed onto a pile of rubble and pointed to the plumes of dark grey smoke rising in the distance, the nearest less than half a kilometer away.“I see one, I see a second, and the third is just behind this house,” he said. “If you don’t want to die, I suggest you gather your things and follow me.”A local resident looks for a dog over the fence of a house destroyed by a Russian bomb in Vovchansk, Kharkiv Oblast, on May 11, 2024.