Nikopol, Ukraine: Yuri stands outside his home as the Insulate Ukraine team installs replacement windows after a nearby artillery strike.

It’s hard to truly comprehend the destructive power of these weapons of war. An artillery shell had landed across the street from Yuri's home. One determined piece of shrapnel crossed the street, cut through a thick steel gate, passed through 2 feet of his home’s thick walls before finally impacting the ceiling.

Yuri had been running to his basement shelter and was just at the shelter entrance - ten or fifteen meters from the impact zone, when the artillery hit.

Yuri was thrown down the stairs by the force of the explosion. He was lucky. He survived.

Yuri walked into his living room, greeting the Insulate Ukraine team and thanking them for installing the new emergency windows. As we stood in his living room, he pulled out a carved wooden backgammon board. "I made this" he said proudly, "it's my work"

As we spoke with Yuri the percussive thuds of artillery sounded. He could recognize the sounds of artillery, incoming and outbound, and importantly - the distinct sound of the artillery most likely to impact his hamlet.

“When I hear the sound of incoming artillery, I have roughly 4-5 seconds to get to shelter before the round hits.”

Out the front door, jaunt to the left, turn right and barrel down the basement steps into darkness. An oil lamp hung on the wall for those days where there was no electricity to charge a phone. Written on the wall in the basement, illuminated by phone light, Yuri had marked the days of the most intense bombardments. A calendar of Nikopol’s war, scrawled in chalk on the cracked basement wall.

Walking outside his home, Yuri stopped by a large faded world map he had hung under the safety of a weather awning. “Can you believe they even hit Australia?” Sure enough, a piece shrapnel had taken out half of Sydney. “Not sure what they have against the Aussies” he laughed.