‘I cleaned wound from Russian bomb with cologne and swigged it to ease the pain’

Elderly Ukrainian residents have been fleeing from Vovchansk to a processing centre in Kharkiv - David Rose/The Telegraph

As shell blasts thundered around him and drones whirred overhead, Stanislav put his head down, hunched his shoulders and carried on pushing his bike.

Nervously walking through the ruins of his home town, the 78-year-old retired driver feared one of the explosions could finish him at any moment.

Police had told residents by telephone that their best hope of surviving the devastation engulfing Vovchansk was to reach the collection point where they could be evacuated.

For more than three weeks he had been sheltering in his basement, rarely daring to go above ground except to go to the lavatory.

In that time, the town outside Kharkiv, only a few miles from the Russian border, had been hammered by shelling and missiles from Moscow’s renewed offensive against northeastern Ukraine.

The town, which four years ago had a population of 17,000, is now largely destroyed and almost empty. By some estimates, 50 to 80 per cent of the buildings have been destroyed.

On Monday morning, Stanislav, who declined to give his full name, decided to make a break for it. Police said they could not get to his home and he would have to make his own way. He packed two small bags with shirts, socks, tea and tinned food, perched them on his handlebars and began a terrifying two-hour journey from what was left of his home to the meeting point.

“Everything was on fire: on the left of me, on the right. There was heavy shelling. I just pushed my bike,” he told The Telegraph hours later, having reached safety and been embraced by tearful relatives who had fled weeks ago.

“The skies were buzzing. I thought the drones were watching me and they were going to kill me,” he said at a refugee registration centre in a Kharkiv suburb.

Earlier in the Russian attack on Vovchansk, Stanislav had learnt painfully the dangers of being caught in the open.

Hitching up his shirt he showed a bandaged shrapnel wound low down on his belly.

Stanislav escaped on his bike - David Rose/The Telegraph

Galina Revenko and her family fled their home in Kozacha Lopan after the shelling became intolerable - David Rose/The Telegraph

He had been forced to clean the wound himself by dousing it with cheap aftershave and said he had taken swigs of the cologne to dull the pain.

“It was 60 per cent alcohol. It wasn’t bad,” he joked.

Large numbers of residents either fled or were evacuated, in the early days of the Russian onslaught. However, small numbers of the elderly, vulnerable and infirm, or smallholders worried about leaving their livestock, are thought to remain.

Valentina, 84, another Vovchansk evacuee, had made a four-mile trek to the collection point on Monday morning with her friend and neighbour Klaudia, 82.

Valentina said: “I have been in my basement since it since the attacks started.

“I just came out of the basement and called the police to tell them I was still alive. The police said, if you manage to get to this place, maybe you will be saved.

“Everything was exploding. Shells were flying. Overhead there was the constant sound of drones.”

The pair had shared a basement for three weeks, eating cold food because they could not cook.

Klaudia said: “Even going to the toilet I was afraid because I thought if I came out, the drones would see me and then they would start firing at me.”

Ukraine has come under intense pressure since Russia launched its renewed Kharkiv offensive in the early hours of May 10. Kyiv has had to rush reinforcements to the area while ceding ground on other areas of the front.

Ukraine says its forces still control some 70 per cent of Vovchansk but it is under heavy fire.

The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank and research group monitoring battlefield movements, said in its latest update that Russian forces had “marginally advanced” in fields southwest of the town.

Valentina and her neighbour Klaudia hid in a basement together for three weeks before fleeing - David Rose/The Telegraph

Last week, Washington gave Ukraine limited permission to use Western-supplied weapons to strike some military targets on Russian territory as part of Kyiv’s efforts to fend off attacks on Kharkiv.

For many in the region, it is the second time the war has come to their villages and towns. Towns outside Kharkiv were occupied in the early stages of the Russian invasion in February 2022, only to be liberated by Ukrainian forces months later.

Galina Revenko and her family had fled their home in Kozacha Lopan after deciding the shelling had become intolerable.

She said: “I never thought that the Russians would come back like this.”

Meanwhile, one person was killed and two wounded in a Russian rocket attack in the Kharkiv region. Russia targeted Slobozhanske, southeast of the city, Governor Oleg Synegubov said.

“Houses were damaged. One man died. Another man and a woman were wounded,” he said.

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