Inside Kharkiv, a city once close to Russia comes under daily bombardment

Maksim pointed to the pile of debris that used to be his house and recalled how air raid sirens sent his family into the basement just before the missile hit.

The Russian bombs rained down on Rudnev Square, a park surrounded by homes and government buildings in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv.

The blasts gutted the offices of the Kharkiv court of appeal, flattened residences like Maksim’s, and left a crater surrounded by fallen bricks and the skeletons of mangled cars.

“It was a huge explosion, everyone was terrified,” Maksim said.

Only 25 kilometres from the Russian border, and home to a mostly Russian-speaking population, Kharkiv is being steadily demolished by Russian forces.

Daily rounds of shells, rockets and missiles fly into the industrial city of 1.4 million, laying waste to entire neighbourhoods.

A downtown jewelry store and clothing shop were inexplicably gutted. An electronics outlet was reduced to bent metal that banged about in the spring gusts.

Where the next volley of Russian munitions would land was a guessing game, a resident warned as he greeted Global News at the edge of town.

“It’s like a lottery,” he said.

(Global News is not naming some of its sources for security reasons.)

Few places illustrate the miscalculations of President Vladimir Putin better than Kharkiv. Its proximity and close ties to Russia embodied Putin’s view that Ukraine was in fact part of the Russian Federation.

Russian troops headed for the city at the outset of the invasion that began on Feb. 24, but if Putin thought they would be welcomed on the streets as liberators, he was wrong.

More than a month into the war, the Ukrainian defence forces still hold the city, and the Russian army has reverted to its familiar tactic of shelling buildings without regard to civilians.

“The Russians’ mistake was they thought if 90 per cent of the population speaks Russian, we will greet them with flowers,” said Mayor Ihor Terekhov. “They didn’t realize that the city of Kharkiv was, is and will be Ukrainian.”

Wearing a black hoodie and jeans, the mayor of the besieged city sat behind a tiny desk in a tiny room, at a location he did not want disclosed for security reasons.

The Russian attacks have caused “huge destruction,” he said. More than 1,400 buildings have been ruined, among them 69 schools, 53 kindergartens and 15 hospitals, he said. Based on the decline in bread sales, he estimated almost a third of the population had fled.

“I think it’s really genocide of Ukrainian citizens, and Kharkiv also,” said Terekhov, who became mayor after his predecessor died of COVID-19.

But he said Kharkiv was carrying on. Garbage collectors were still picking up the trash despite the dangers, and city workers were planting flowers.

“People should understand there is life here still,” Terekhov said.

The mayor has likewise turned up at funerals for fallen soldiers and in the city centre, because “people should see their mayor.”

Although Russian defence officials said they would “drastically reduce” attacks in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, eastern cities such as Kharkiv remain under heavy attack.

Fifty-nine artillery and mortar shells were fired in the region on Sunday, according to Ukrainian authorities. On Monday, seven homes were damaged and one person was killed.

In a neighbourhood regularly shelled by the Russian forces, black smoke was still rising on Tuesday afternoon from an apartment building hit that morning.

Glass shards and demolished cars littered the roads between buildings with their windows blown out, and the lawns were pocked with craters.

The contents of a destroyed 16-floor residential tower were spewed across the grass: a photo album, a toy truck, a pair of jeans, a computer keyboard, Christmas tinsel.

Artillery boomed overhead, and edgy Ukrainian soldiers fired rifle bursts into the air when journalists approached.

A member of the Ukrainian civil defence forces said he lived nearby and had rushed to the scene immediately after the building was attacked.

He said that while first-responders were on site, the Russians bombarded the area again, and several firefighters were injured.

A veteran soldier, he said he had seen a lot. “But even for me it was shocking,” he said, accusing the Russians of “trying to make terror.”

The wrecking of the city has driven some residents into metro stations, where platforms once filled with subway passengers have become campgrounds, with tents, sleeping bags and mattresses.

Victoria moved underground with her mother and two daughters, aged 5 and 15, after their home was damaged by shelling.

“Why is Russia doing this?” she said. “We are all Russian speakers in this area and for some reason, we’re shelled the most.”

Everyone in her neighbourhood spoke Russian, and had family and friends in Russia, undermining Putin’s claim that his invasion was meant to protect Ukraine’s Russians.

The kids stay in a locker room that was formerly used by subway staff. They share it with three kittens. The shelling is mercifully inaudible in the metro.

“We try not to talk about it,” Victoria said.

On a park bench in Kharkiv’s Rudnev Square, Irene and Natalia sat in front of their apartment building, which has lost some of its windows due to attacks. They were unwinding after their shift at the maternity hospital.

“It’s terrorism,” Irena said of the Russian targeting of civilian buildings, but she said she had stopped hiding during air raids.

“We are used to the shelling, and if it is not so close, we don’t go into the basement,” she said.

Despite the city’s historic ties to Russia, she said it had become difficult to talk about the war with friends and family there, who only get government-controlled news.

When she asked relatives in Russia why they were not protesting the invasion of Ukraine, she said they replied “we don’t want to talk about it.”

Maksim has been living in temporary quarters since his home off Rudnev Square was bombed, but he still brings his five children to the playground across from their wrecked house.

Aged two to 16, they played on the slide in the afternoon, a moment of normalcy amid the craziness. Across the street, a bulldozer was cleaning up the mess left by the attack on his residence.

“We are very similar people, Russians, Ukrainians,” he said, seemingly perplexed by the war launched by his nearby neighbours.

But he said he had faith the Ukrainian armed forces would repel the Russian army from Kharkiv. His mother has gone to Poland but he was staying, he said.

“We were born here and we will die here,” he said. “Today the bombing is here, tomorrow it’s somewhere else. We will not run away from our homeland, we will not give up this city.”

Then the air raid sirens sounded, and he gathered his children and took them home.

Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca