"There are many mixed families," said Stryzhakova. "Parents, children, we're all connected. And now we've become enemies. There's no other way to put it."
The Russian defence ministry did not respond to AFP's questions asking for its account of what happened in the city.
Mayor Gambarashvili, who was hit in the leg by shrapnel as he oversaw the city's evacuation, shook his head when asked to estimate the number of civilian casualties.
Dozens, no doubt. Perhaps more. There were still around 4,000 people in Vovchansk on May 10, mostly older people, since most families with children had been evacuated months earlier.
Families divided by war
Kira Dzhafarova, 57, believes her mother, Valentina Radionova, who had lived at 40 Dukhovna Street in a small house with a charming garden, is likely dead.
Their last phone conversation was on May 17. "At 85, I'm not going anywhere," her mother insisted. Satellite images and witnesses have since confirmed that the house was completely destroyed.
"Since then I know it's over," sighed Kira, who provided DNA for identification, if and when the fighting ends.
In a particularly cruel irony, her mother, a Russian national, had moved to Vovchansk so she could be equidistant between her two children, who had fallen out.
Kira has lived in Kharkiv for 35 years and became officially Ukrainian two years ago. Her older brother, who she believes supports Russian President Vladimir Putin, remained in Belgorod, the family's hometown and the first big Russian city on the other side of the border.
Kira, a psychiatrist, now only refers to him as her "former brother".
AFP was unable to contact him directly.
Volodymyr Zymovsky, 70, is also missing. On May 16, he decided to flee the bombardment in a car with his 83-year-old mother, his wife Raisa, and a neighbour. Zymovsky and his mother were both shot dead, "most likely by a Russian sniper", Raisa said.
Amid the hail of bullets, the 59-year-old paediatric nurse had barely got out of the car when she was grabbed by Russian soldiers and held for two days. She managed to escape, hid in a neighbour's cellar for a night, and eventually fled through the forest.
She recounted her harrowing odyssey in a calm, measured voice. One thing alone seems to matter to her now: finding the bodies of her husband and mother-in-law and giving them a proper burial.
'They took my son'
A rumour has circulated among the survivors that the bodies that littered the streets of Vovchansk for days were thrown into a mass grave. Where and by whom, no one knows.
A handful of civilians still remain in Vovchansk. Oleksandre Garlychev, 70, claims to have seen at least three when he returned to his former apartment on a bicycle in mid-September to retrieve belongings.
Garlychev lived at 10A Rubezhanskaya Street, in a southern part of the city that was relatively spared. He only left on August 10.
Vovchansk's survivors -- and even a few of its officials -- quietly wonder whether it will ever be rebuilt given its proximity to the border, regardless of how the war ends.
Asked whether she could ever forgive her husband's killer, Raisa Zymovska fell silent for a long time. Then, in a whisper, she replied: "I don't know, I really don't. As a Christian, yes, but as a human being... What can I say?"
As for the librarian Stryzhakova, she can no longer bring herself to open a Russian book, even the classics, since her only son Pavlo was killed in the Battle of Bakhmut.
"I know that literature is not to blame, but Russia, all of it disgusts me. They took my son, it's personal."