Emile Ducke

As they evacuated from the fighting in Ukraine, the passengers already thought of what they left behind.

As war beat a path through southern and eastern Ukraine, most of the population fled. But other residents have hunkered down, unable — or unwilling — to leave.

Not everyone evacuated when the Chernobyl nuclear plant melted down in 1986. The few who stayed lived through another calamity when Russian troops marched in.

“My children left, but I don’t want to. I warm myself with an electric heater when there is power,” Alyona Kovalyova said.

In a largely abandoned apartment complex on the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-biggest city, the people who stayed behind find comfort in their surroundings and each other.

Once a vast prison ground for political exiles, the banks of the Ket River are now home to a range of solitary settlements.