After a vicious battle for Kharkiv: wreckage, a caught rocket and artillery booms.

KHARKIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s army on Friday was waging a fierce battle to push Russian forces again from Ukraine’s second-largest metropolis, Kharkiv, a day after a vicious battle that littered the freeway main into the town with burned-out Russian troop carriers and no less than one physique.

The troop carriers had been halted on the entrance to the town, within the shadow of big blue and yellow letters spelling KHARKIV. Close by, the physique of a Russian soldier, wearing a colorless inexperienced uniform, lay on the facet of the street, dusted in a lightweight coating of snow that fell in a single day.

Troopers despatched to carry the place had few particulars of the battle that came about, saying solely that it occurred Thursday morning, shortly after Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, gave the order to attack.

“Putin desires us to throw down our weapons,” stated a Ukrainian soldier named Andrei, positioned in trench unexpectedly dug into the black mud on the facet of the street. “I believe we may function extra slyly, collect up our forces and launch a counterattack.”

Off within the distance however shut sufficient to really feel, artillery shells boomed. Russian forces, which on Thursday pushed over the border from their staging space close to Belgorod, about 40 miles from Kharkiv, have gathered in power north of the town. It was not clear the place or whether or not they would advance.

A lot of the combating seemed to be happening a number of miles exterior the town limits, close to a village referred to as Tsyrkuny. The variety of army and civilian casualties ensuing from the battle had been unclear, however on Friday the native police stated a 14-year-old boy had been killed in a village close to Kharkiv when shell hit close to his dwelling. However strikes sometimes hit shut sufficient to the town to elicit shrieks of terror from pedestrians, sending them fleeing into metro stations for canopy.

Whereas Russian officers have stated their army was endeavoring to keep away from civilian areas, the physique of a Smerch rocket, which Ukrainian officers stated was fired by Russian forces, was caught vertically in the midst of the road exterior the headquarters of the Nationwide Guard. A number of kilometers away, the rocket’s tail part had buried itself within the asphalt throughout from an onion-domed Orthodox church.

A group of emergency companies officers, wearing flack jackets and helmets, was trying to extract the tail from the pavement, however having difficulties. A member of the group stated that the tail and the physique had been totally different phases of the rocket, probably jettisoned because the explosive ordinance hurtled towards its goal close to the entrance traces.

“That is 200 kilos of steel,” the emergency officer stated, pointing to the rocket’s story. “It may have fallen by a constructing or hit folks.”

Even because the artillery barrages intensified, not everybody was prepared to cover. Strolling with intention towards the supply of the artillery booms on the outskirts of Kharkiv was Roman Balakelyev, wearing camouflage, a double-barreled shotgun slung over his shoulder.

“I dwell right here, that is my dwelling. I’m going to defend it,” stated Mr. Balakelyev, who additionally pulled out a big knife he had strapped to his again as if to point out it off. “I don’t suppose the Russians perceive me like I perceive them.”

A short time later, Mr. Balakelyev reached the sting of the town, the place the Ukrainian troops had been huddled across the deserted Russian troop transports. They watched as he handed. Nobody moved to cease him. One soldier uttered: “Intent on victory.”

Mr. Balakelyev, his gaze mounted and his shotgun prepared, headed down the street within the path of the booms and a tall billboard that learn: “Shield the long run: UKRAINE-NATO-EUROPE.”