2023-08-01 18:41:00
KHARKIV.- Say one Kiev one can delude oneself that the war is over -just an illusion-, in Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, the opposite is true.
“Tonight there was a drone attack near your hotel”, the taxi driver tells us as soon as we arrive at the central station at six in the morning, following a seven-hour night train from kyiv. In the air you can perceive that classic gunpowder smell left by the fires caused by the bombs.
Rescuers clear rubble following a drone hit an educational establishment, in Kharkiv, on August 1, 2023, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.SERGEY BOBOK – AFP
Before reaching our hotel -which is called “Victory”, the only desire of the Ukrainians-, we passed by the place of the attack. A faithful reflection of that extraordinary resilience and resistance of the Ukrainians, there are already workers with bulldozers that remove the rubble. There is a devastated two-story brick building, with much of the roof gone: it burned down in a fire, leaving only a skeleton. Among the ruins, where there are twisted pieces of cement, iron and sheet metal, a red folder stands out. We approached and a plaque indicates that it was a public technical school for professionals. That is, a civilian target.
“It was a soldiers’ dormitory”assures, however, a woman who passes by, who carries two plastic bags with empty water bottles.
There were no casualties in the attack, according to official information. Although everyone knows that if there are dead soldiers, no one will give that information.
“Since the first day of the full-scale Russian invasion, Kharkiv has been attacked every day, with all kinds of bombs.. Tonight there were four Iranian Shahed drones”, says Dmytro Kutovyi, director of the Press Center of this city, which is only 40 kilometers from Russia, that is, too close to the enemy.
“For us, Shahed drones are not popular weapons, but rather we are used to the old Soviet S-300 missiles, which are very fast and, beyond all anti-aircraft systems, are not detectable,” adds Dimitri resignedly, who before the start of the war he worked in construction.
As in the rest of Ukraine, Kharkiv’s economic situation -famous for having the largest square in the world and monumental buildings of typical Soviet architecture-, it is catastrophic. It was never taken over by the Russians, but several of its palaces were destroyed in the first weeks of the war, although some are gradually being repaired.
in what was considered the “student capital” – since Kharkiv is a university city in which young people from all over the world studied – lived before February 24, 2022 a million and a half people. Among them, 220,000 students, including 12,000 foreigners.
With the beginning of a war that no one expected – the Russians came here to shop and the Ukrainians went to Russia for dinner -, Kharkiv is empty, reducing to half or less of inhabitants; no one really knows the numbers. But in the last few months many have started to return reason why it is believed that the population returned to have a million inhabitants.
Although it is seen that some life has returned, bars and restaurants that work, with chipboard on their windows for fear that the shock wave of an attack will destroy the windows, the climate that is breathed is not the best.
“Kharkiv was a vibrant, young, multicultural city, full of energy… Now it is sad because the truth is that people, who desperately need normalcy, act as if there is security, going out to eat, to have a drink, to shop, but the danger is there, latent: the reality is that, in two minutes, in twenty, in two hours, a missile can fall”, assures Ruslan Missiona 27-year-old who, like all Ukrainians, Putin’s invasion dramatically changed his life.
“My apartment, which had been saved in a bombing, weeks later was destroyed by another… They told me when I was going to the center of Ukraine to join the Territorial Defense Forces”, he says, shaking his head. She now she has been back for a few months and hopes to finish his PhD in business.
Ruslan MisiunaElisabetta Piqué
Ilko Bozhko, an army major from Dnipro who has been working here for seven months, agrees that the situation is very difficult. “The problem is that Kharkiv is very close to Russia and they can attack at any time.. Ukraine has a 2,500 kilometer border with Russia and they cannot control every inch and this means that they can attack us here, not only with missiles, but also with Shahed drones. And now they are combining the two things, ”he acknowledges.
“It is not a healthy thing, people try to adapt, but there is a constant threat. Your life is at risk, there are families that have children and cannot control this risk”, admits this officer. While there is a majority of the population that lives here because it is where they have their apartment and they have nowhere else to go, there is a non-minority percentage that stays because they want to. “Many of them join the army and others try to continue with their daily routine, something that is not easy, because life is not as it was before”, he laments.
“Technically, this is the closest Ukrainian city to Moscow, so logistically, this is a gate to Moscow.”Bozhko explains. But it is a door more closed than ever. If before everyone spoke Russian and some were pro-Russian, Vladimir Putin’s “special operation” transformed everything. “This change in attitude is reflected by a woman I met from the Saltivka neighborhood, the most destroyed by Russian bombs, who confessed to me that before she did not understand the reason for the Orange Revolution (from Maidan, with which the Ukrainians said enough to Vladimir Putin). But since the Russians destroyed his house, his life, everything, now he only has one goal: to cut the throat of every Russian who crosses his path.
Conocé The Trust Project
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