Russia edges toward Kharkiv Some flee, others refuse to leave [Video]

A 79-year-old woman makes the sign of the cross and, gripping her cane, leaves her home in a quaint village in northeast Ukraine.Related video above: House foreign aid bill fightTorn screens, shattered glass and scorched trees litter the yard of Olha Faichuk’s apartment building in Lukiantsi, north of the city of Kharkiv. Abandoned on a nearby bench is a shrapnel-pierced cellphone that belonged to one of two people killed when a Russian bomb struck, leaving a blackened crater in its wake.”God, forgive me for leaving my home, bless me on my way,” Faichuk said, taking one last look around before slowly shuffling to an evacuation vehicle.Unlike embattled front-line villages further east, attacks on the border village near the Russian region of Belgorod, were rare until a wave of air strikes began in late March.Russia seemingly exploited air defense shortages in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, to pummel the region’s energy infrastructure …