Boy in the bunker Only one child left behind in ruins of Ukrainian village

Tymofiy Seidov is the only child left in his village near the city of Kharkiv, in north-east Ukraine.

- Daniel Boffey

The eight-year-old spends much of his time drawing at a little table, dimly illuminated from above by a tiny LED light, in the corner of the otherwise almost completely dark 40-by-five-metre basement that he shares with 23 others, including his mum, aunt and grandmother.

Tanks feature a lot in his pictures. But today, in the gloom, he is working on Dalek-like monsters he says he remembers from a cartoon he watched on YouTube before the war.

He also draws happier scenes, sometimes, of houses under the sun and rainbows in the sky.

But the world outside this underground flea market, full of jumble, mattresses, chairs, washing lines, giant jars of pickled vegetables, dusty marked duvets, plastic bags full of clothes and framed icons proudly on display atop overturned boxes, has been out of bounds to him for months.

There is a Spider-Man figure, a few packs of cards, a Mike the Knight board game and a collection of felt-tip pens and pencils in his corner, but Tymofiy has not seen another child since 30 April, when most of the basement was evacuated.

This quiet, polite boy and his family have been living here below the ruins of a two-storey kindergarten and medical centre in the village of Kutuzivka, 12 miles east of Kharkiv, since the war in Ukraine began on 24 February.

The fighting around Kutuzivka has been bitter. Closer to Russia than any other large Ukrainian city, Kharkiv was a key target for Vladimir Putin and this territory was the way through.

Before the war, the population of Kutuzivka was 1,500-strong. Today it is fewer than 50.