In a city that has faced the fury of Russian fire, a chimpanzee made a brave but brief break for freedom that ended in a cuddle and a bicycle ride back home.
Chichi the chimpanzee went on the loose in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and was seen in the city centre by stunned locals, including a keeper at the nearby zoo that he fled from.
After others tried to win his trust with sweet treats, videos show a blonde woman kneeling down and talking to the escaped ape.
Chichi chats to a woman. Photo / screen shot
The clip then showed him approaching her again and accepting her offer of her smart yellow jacket.
According to reports, the ape escaped from a temporary facility after making a hole in a chain link fence, the Daily Telegraph reported, adding that he had already made several unsuccessful bids for freedom before finally escaping.
Oleksiy Grigoryev, director of the Feldman ecopark zoo, told Ukrainian media that Chichi was in good condition after his sojourn into the city.
He was evacuated from the zoo in the spring before it was badly damaged by Russian shelling.
More than 100 animals and six volunteers were killed during an earlier strike this year. It is one of several private zoos in Kharkiv that struggled to remove animals to safety amid heavy fighting in May.
At the time, there were reports that Kharkiv Zoo was preparing to put down lions and other wild animals in case Russian shelling let the dangerous animals loose in the city.
Feldman said that although many animals had returned to the zoo their enclosures were not safe, the Daily Mail reported.
"Animals suffer from war no less than people... The recipe for the rehabilitation of war animals is quite simple - it is love and care. And a peaceful sky above your head," Feldman wrote in a recent Facebook post.
Chichi gets a hug before his ride home.
Although Kharkiv has not been targeted by any major Russian attacks on the city centre since June, the suburbs of Ukraine's second-largest city are still regularly targeted.
Chichi the chimp is not the only case of animal antics to have brought welcome relief to the people of Kharkiv recently.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian firefighters wearing full gear battled raging flames and smoke to pull a kitten out from under a metal chair in the rubble of a large wooden hotel-restaurant complex hit by a rocket in Kharkiv.
Video showed the firefighters petting and cuddling the feline as they carried it to safety.
"We found a beauty," one of the firefighters said as the kitten wiggled around in a colleague's arms.
