Single day shows reality of life in Ukr as war hits 1,000 days

Managing Zaporizhstal steel mill during wartime means days filled with calculations for Serhii Saphonov

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The clock on her wall stopped almost as soon as the day began, its hands frozen by the Russian bomb that hit the dormitory serving as home for Ukrainians displaced by war.

It was 1:45 am in an upstairs room in the eastern city of Zaporizhzhia, Natalia Panasenko's home for just shy of a year after the town she thinks of as her real home came under Russian occupation. The explosion blasted a door on top of her, smashed her refrigerator and television and shredded the flowers she'd just received for her 63rd birthday.

"The house was full of people and flowers. People were congratulating me...and then there was nothing. Everything was mixed in the rubble," she said. "I come from a place where the war is going on every day. We only just left there, and it seemed to be quieter here. And the war caught up with us again."

Nov 11 was a typical day of violence and resilience in Ukraine. The Associated Press fanned out across Ukraine to chronicle 24 hours of life just as the country prepared to mark a grim milestone Tuesday: 1,000 days since Russia's full-scale invasion on Feb 24, 2022.