From the top of the city’s Rotunda of People’s Friendship, this tribute to soldier can be see from a distance.

Up close, the mural is on the side of an eight-storey block of flats.

It features local lad Serhii Volynskyi, 31, who was one of the defenders of Mariupol, as commander of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade.

This short video shows the Rotunda – amply displaying Poltava’s quiet side. Volynskyi’s portrait is about a mile down the hill.

He surrendered to the Russians on May 20 last year and was returned to Ukraine in a prisoner release four months later.

Below, painted on what looks like a grit bucket, is a tribute to the Ukrainian hero dog Patron, a Jack Russell who sniffed out 236 ordnance devices in the first three months of the conflict near Chernihiv.

Poltava, 350 kilometres to the east of Kyiv and 140 kilometres to the south-west of Kharkiv, hasn’t been hit by Russian rockets.

So people tend to ignore the air raid sirens in the knowledge that the bombs are heading for targets near the Dnieper river, 120 kilometres away.

The city of 280,00 inhabitants is perhaps best known as the site where Peter the Great decisively beat the Swedes in 1709, and has a great historical importance for Russia, though locals view it as a Ukrainian defeat as the Cossacks had sided with the Swedish.

The museum north of the city commemorating the battle is currently closed.

It’s also famous for being the home of Nikolia Gogol , writer of the novel Dead Souls.

It can seem undisturbed by the conflict but many people from Kharkiv fled here. They were put up in schools and children’s education shut down for the rest of 2022.

Some only returned to the classroom last month.

Above, a priest holds an open air seminar with church goers.

Below, Patron has the final word.