Hundreds of residents decided to stay back in the village, though many others fled after two months of war. The last ones to remain are the poorest and most vulnerable, often the oldest, and those whose only riches come from the earth
Vasili Kushch walks through a farmyard amid the sound of regular nearby shelling, in the village of Mala Tokmatchka which he refuses to leave saying he has nowhere to go and that no one will take him because he is a farm worker, near the southern front of fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces, south of Zaporizhzhia on April 23, 2022. (Credit: Ed JONES / AFP)
Mala Tokmachka, Ukraine: Standing in front of the home of his boss recently hit by a bomb in southern Ukraine, Vassili Kushch never wavers in his commitment to the land, picking up his shovel and getting to work.
"I must work. I don't have anywhere else to go," labourer Kushch, 63, says in the village of Mala Tokmachka, 70 kilometres (43 miles) southeast of Zaporizhzhia.
The village, only a few kilometres from the invisible line separating Moscow's troops from Kyiv's forces, wakes up every night to Russian rockets splitting the sky and discovers the disastrous consequences every morning.
Russian strikes mangled the metal fence belonging to Kushch's boss. Several windows in his old tractors, parked in the garden, have shattered.