‘It’s like Chernobyl now’: Life in Kharkiv’s ghost town

When there is no shelling, Saltivka falls silent. “Saltivka is like Chernobyl now,” said Serhiy Khrystych, 44, as he washed his face with water from a plastic bottle, in building 80. “Of course there was the radiation in Chernobyl, but it was not destroyed. We do not have the radiation but everything here is destroyed,” he said. “It is impossible to live.”