The Ukrainian capital of Kyiv was the scene Wednesday of unrelenting bombardment, with firefighters battling to extinguish fires in residential buildings targeted across the city.

Workers rushed to try to save the capital's artistic patrimony, covering a statue of Italian poet and philosopher Dante Alighieri with sandbags to protect it from potential damage from shelling.

Faced with the onslaught, some turned to religious observance for comfort: A man lit a candle on a cross lighting up an artist’s co-living studio space being used as a bomb shelter. A religious icon with the image known as “St. Javelin,” depicting a saint holding a javelin, was pasted on a wall in the space, also used to support volunteer Ukrainian forces.

And even in faraway, Odesa, mostly spared so far of the Russian onslaught, people were preparing for what they feared would soon come to the architectural treasure as volunteers loaded sandbags to defend the city.