Danyk Rak enjoys riding his bike, playing soccer and quiet moments with the family’s short-legged dog and two white cats, Pushuna and Lizun.

But at age 12, his childhood has been abruptly cut short. His family's home was destroyed and his mother was seriously wounded as Russian forces bombarded Kyiv’s suburbs and surrounding towns in a failed effort to seize the capital.

Six months after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, and with no end to the conflict in sight, The Associated Press (AP) revisited Danyk as well as a police officer and an Orthodox priest whose lives have been upended by war.

Tears come to Danyk’s eyes as his mother, Luda, recalls being pulled from the rubble, covered in blood, after shrapnel tore through her body and smashed her right foot.

Twenty-two weeks after she was wounded, she’s still waiting to have her foot amputated and to be fitted with a prosthetic. She keeps the piece of shrapnel surgeons removed during one of her many operations.

Danyk lives with his mother and grandmother in a house near Chernihiv, a town 140 kilometers (nearly 90 miles) north of Kyiv, where a piece of tarp covers the broken bedroom windows. He sells milk from the family's cow that grazes in the nearby fields. A handwritten sign wrapped in clear plastic on the front gate reads: "Please buy milk to help my mother who is injured."

"My mother needs surgery and that’s why I have to help her. I have to help my grandmother too because she has heart problems," Danyk said.

"This was my bedroom," he says, standing next to scorched mattress springs that protrude from the rubble of bricks and plaster.

Polite and soft spoken, Danyk says his father and stepfather are both fighting in the Ukrainian army.

"My father is a soldier, my uncles are soldiers and my grandfather was a soldier, too. My stepfather is a soldier and I will be a soldier," he says with a look of determination. "I want to be an air force pilot."

'Road from hell'

Before the Russian withdrawal from Kyiv and surrounding areas on April 2, suburbs and towns near the city’s airport were pounded by rockets, artillery fire and aerial bombardment in an effort to break the Ukrainian defenses.

Entire city blocks of apartments were blackened by the shelling in Irpin, just 20 kilometers northwest of the capital, along a route where police Lt. Ruslan Huseinov patrolled daily.

Some of the most dramatic scenes from the early stages of the war were of the evacuation from Irpin underneath a destroyed highway bridge, where thousands escaped the relentless attacks.

Huseinov was there for 16 days, organizing crossings where the elderly were carried along muddy pathways in wheelbarrows.

Reconstruction work has begun on the bridge, where mangled concrete and iron bars hang over the river. Clothing and shoes from those who fled can still be seen tangled in the debris.

"This bridge was the road from hell," says Huseinov, 34, standing next to an overturned white van still lodged into a slab of smashed concrete.

Crosses made from construction wood are still nailed to the railings of the bridge to honor those lost and the effort to save civilians.

"The whole world witnessed our solidarity," says Huseinov, who grew up in Germany and says he would never again take the good things in life for granted.

"In my mind, everything has changed: My values in life," he said. "Now I understand what we have to lose."

'It was another life'

The floor of the Church of Andrew the Apostle has been re-tiled and bullet holes in the walls plastered over and repainted – but the horror of what happened in March lies only a few yards away.

The largest mass grave in Bucha – a town outside Kyiv that has become synonymous with the brutality of the Russian attack – is behind the church.

"This grave contained 116 people, including 30 women, and two children," said Father Andriy, who has conducted multiple burial services for civilians found shot dead or killed by shelling, some still only identified as a number while the effort to name all of Bucha’s victims continues.

Many of the bodies were found before the Russians pulled out of the Kyiv region, Father Andriy said.

"We couldn’t bury people in the cemetery because it’s on the outskirts of the city. They left people, dead people, lying in the street. Dead people were found still in their cars. They were trying to leave but the Russians shelled them," said Father Andriy, wearing a large cross around his neck and a dark purple cassock.

"That situation lasted two weeks, and the local authorities began coming up with solutions (to help) relatives and loved ones. It was bad weather and wild animals were discovering the bodies. So something had to be done."

He decided to carry out burial services in the churchyard, many next to where the bodies had been discovered.

The experience, he said, has left people in the town badly shaken.

"I think that, neither myself or anyone who lives in Ukraine, who witnessed the war, can understand why this happened," he said.

"Before the war, it was another life."

"For now we are surviving on adrenaline," he said. "But I’m worried that the aftermath will last decades. It will be hard to get past this and turn the page. Saying the word ‘forgive’ isn’t difficult. But to say it from your heart – for now, that’s not possible."

Cost of war

Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has left tens of thousands of dead, displaced millions and sown economic strife across the world.

Since Feb. 24, 5,587 civilians have been recorded as killed and 7,890 as injured, though the actual casualties are much higher, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said on Aug. 22.

Most of those killed or injured were the victims of explosive weapons such as artillery, missile and air strikes, the OHCHR said.

Separately, the head of Ukraine's armed forces, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said on Aug. 22 that nearly 9,000 Ukrainian military personnel had been killed in the war, the first death toll provided by the military top brass since the invasion. He provided no details.

Russia has not said how many of its soldiers have been killed.

U.S. intelligence estimates that some 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed so far in Ukraine and three times that number wounded – equal to the total Soviet death toll during Moscow's occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.