Brothers Andrii (right), 8, and Maksym Tupkalenko, 6, two of the last children left in their frontline village, play with their toy guns as their mother Varvara, 30, looks at them in Kalynove, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, April 11, 2025. Varvara is forced to make stark choices for the sake of her children, whose father Yurii was killed on the front line in 2023. When fighting intensifies, she takes them back to the family’s apartment in nearby Kharkiv, but the city is a major target, and the swarms of drones that pound it at night terrify the boys. “The kids keep crying, asking to come back to the village,” she told Reuters during one of two visits to Kalynove. “There are spaces here to play, to walk, to ride bikes. There are no chances for that in the city.” REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura