'They didn't expect us to fight back': How one street in Ukraine survived

BORODYANKA, Ukraine — The smell of bodies decomposing under rubble no longer hangs in the air. The land mine-clearers have come and gone. School is back in session, though classes are curtailed by power cuts. The hair salon is open.

But Raisa Yakovenko, a 61-year-old pensioner, still jumps at the thump of a refrigerator door shutting — a faint echo of the Russian bombs that damaged her apartment and ravaged this community in the opening days of the nearly 9-month-old war in Ukraine.

"My troubles are not so serious," she said. "You can live without windows."

The town of Borodyanka was among the invasion's first casualties, becoming a choke point for Russian convoys , about 35 miles away. Its 14,000 residents paid a heavy price for their resistance: Scorched, wrecked