A city of 1.5 million, Kharkiv (Encyclopaedia Britannica article) is Ukraine’s 2nd-largest city.

“In the curia these days there are many people, many mothers with children. We are a total of 40 people,” said Father Gregory Semenkov, chancellor of the Latin Rite Diocese of Kharkiv-Zaporizhzhia. “We put them in a safe place. We were all underground and luckily the bomb hit high up.”