In the smouldering ruins of a children’s clothes shop, signs of Russian desperation emerge

If the battle for Kharkiv becomes a full-scale siege, many more buildings will burn and thousands of civilians may die

For five fear-filled days, residents of Kharkiv have listened to the rockets slamming into the fringes of their city and prayed that at least civilian areas would be spared. 

But on Monday, at about midday, the moment they had been dreading arrived. 

At least 11 people were killed in rocket strikes in residential areas of Kharkiv as both sides readied for a major battle over Ukraine’s second largest city. …

Images and videos posted by local residents showed the rapid thudda-thudda-thudda of multiple rockets raining down on residential buildings in a northern neighbourhood of the city.

Grey clouds and clusters of explosions could be seen as the missiles exploded in a pattern of multiple rocket launch-systems. 

Then came the close-ups of the aftermath. 

The smouldering ruins of a children’s clothes shop. Cars aflame in a residential block. 

A man sitting lifeless at the wheel of his shrapnel-holed Hyundai sedan, the airbag stained with blood from his head. …

But on the whole, the huge Russian army sitting just outside the city has not explicitly or indiscriminately targeted civilians. …

Those tactics have so far failed to deliver, and many are reading it a deliberate signal of a change to more ruthless tactics. …

That could mean the kind of unrestrained violence unleashed on Grozny in the 2000s and in Aleppo in 2016. 

It is a prospect many in this Russian-speaking city would find unthinkable.