Russia attacked Kharkov in the first days of a full-scale invasion and even managed to occupy part of the Kharkov region for several months. After its liberation in September 2022, the city with a population of over a million remains a frontline city, daily subjected to bombing and shelling by missiles and kamikaze drones. Journalist and Ukrainian Armed Forces serviceman Yuriy Matsarsky, having visited his hometown, discovered that despite the shelling, Kharkov not only continues to live its own life (cafes, the metro, and even the zoo are open, only schools have switched to remote learning), but has also become more patriotic. Residents began to speak more Ukrainian, carried out an inspection of monuments (covering with covers those who are no longer respected in Ukraine) and are doing everything to help the defenders from the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
“Fog” instead of “Patriots”
The Kharkiv hypermarket Epicenter, destroyed by a Russian missile in May 2024, still smells of burning. In the empty parking lot of the hypermarket, in huge letters — you have to walk from one to the other to read them — it says God saves our souls, Patriot saves our lives. Under the inscription is a schematic, childish drawing of this very Patriot, an anti-aircraft missile system capable of intercepting the ballistic missiles with which the Russians are literally bombarding Kharkiv.
Ukraine was given about a dozen of these systems, but they never reached Kharkov. The city is not yet given these American anti-aircraft guns, fearing for their safety. The distance from Epicenter to the Russian border is 40 kilometers. The missile covers this distance not even in seconds, but in fractions of a second.
If one of the Russian reconnaissance drones constantly circling the city detects a Patriot, then saving the launcher from the Iskander will be almost impossible. That is why Kharkov is not covered by modern air defense systems; instead, there are crews of old Soviet air defense systems, mobile groups in pickup trucks with machine guns that intercept kamikaze drones, and the Tuman GPS jamming system.
If a Russian reconnaissance drone detects a Patriot, saving the launcher from an Iskander will be virtually impossible
The latter is turned on every time radars detect the takeoff of Russian aircraft capable of carrying guided aerial bombs (GAB). This happens about ten times a day. Sometimes even more often. The “fog” creates interference for GPS, which is why taxi drivers’ navigators malfunction, visitors cannot find their way to the desired point, and Russian bombs deviate from the course set in them and do not always hit where the pilots of the occupation Air Force send them.
But Tuman does not protect against missiles at all. And the charred ruins of Epicenter clearly confirm this. The facade of the hypermarket, although badly damaged, stood firm and did not collapse. Even the sign with the name survived. Now Ukrainian flags hang on it. But inside there is a real chaos of charred metal structures, collapsed roof sheets, goods scattered by the blast wave and smashed to pieces. Surprisingly, in some places the price tags, already faded by the merciless sun this year, are still preserved.
Kharkiv residents set up an impromptu memorial at the entrance to the hypermarket: they attached photographs of the workers and visitors killed in the mass attack to a lamppost, brought in oil lamps and a pile of plush toys. Sometimes the toys are scattered around the parking lot by gusts of wind, but each time they are picked up and taken back to the memorial by the Epicenter security guard, a corpulent man of about 60. He is not guarding the store, there is nothing left to steal there anyway – everything was either destroyed by the explosion or burned in the fire caused by the missile strike. He is making sure that onlookers do not climb inside.
“You can film whatever you want here, but don’t go beyond the tape, it’s dangerous,” the guard points to the white and red tape stretched along the facade. “Something could fall on your head there.”
The guard, like probably most Kharkiv residents of his generation, speaks Russian. Young people of student and high school age increasingly use Ukrainian. In the 80s, everything was the other way around: older people were Ukrainian-speaking, younger people spoke almost exclusively Russian.
“I spoke this language for 50 years, but after what the Russians did to our Kharkov, I dream of forgetting it”
In general, the space of the Russian language in Kharkov is noticeably narrowing. Just a few years ago, most advertising signs were in Russian, and in the metro, even after the Russians seized Crimea and started the war in Donbass, stops were announced in two languages: Ukrainian and Russian. Now, the Kharkov metro has become almost an example of de-Russification. Just this year, three stations at once changed their names associated with the former imperial metropolis. “Geroev Truda” became “Saltovskaya”, “Pushkinskaya” – “Yaroslava Mudrogo”, “Yuzhny Vokzal” – “Vokzalnaya”, well, because in imperial and Soviet times the station was a kind of gateway to the south, in independent Ukraine Kharkov is one of the northernmost cities.
Outdoor advertising is also being Ukrainized. In some places, old signs have already been replaced with updated ones made in the state language, and in others, old ones are being corrected with a marker and a brush, changing the Russian “ы” to the Ukrainian “и”, and the Russian “и” to і.
“I spoke this language for 50 years, but after what the Russians did to our Kharkov, I dream of forgetting it,” says Elena, a saleswoman at a small grocery store near the city’s central Sumskaya Street, in not very fluent Ukrainian. “They haven’t left a single living place in the city, they bomb and bomb.”
In Kharkov, there are traces of shelling at every step – craters from mines and shells on the asphalt, historic buildings destroyed by missiles, walls riddled with shrapnel. City services daily collect debris from buildings hit by a missile or a kamikaze drone in order to then take it to the dump by trucks. You walk down the street, see such a pile and understand – a few hours ago a tragedy occurred in one of the nearby courtyards: someone died or was wounded, someone lost their home.
You walk down the street, see such a pile and understand – a few hours ago a tragedy happened: someone died or was injured, someone lost their home
“LGBT people, just like other Ukrainians, are patriots”
Churches (including those of the Moscow Patriarchate), museums and libraries are suffering from Russian bombs and missiles.
One of the strikes damaged the already dilapidated building of the Kharkiv Karaite Kenesa. It is likely that the same missile that targeted the Karaites temporarily left Kharkiv Pride, an organization that works to protect the rights of LGBT people, without a headquarters. During the shelling of Kharkiv Podil, the sewage system was damaged, and the basement where Kharkiv Pride was based was flooded.
The organization’s activists spent a long time looking for a replacement for the old headquarters (Kharkiv Pride says that the city authorities did not interfere with these searches, but did not help in any way either), and eventually bought a fairly large semi-basement in the historical center of the city, where they held another pride in early September. Local ultra-rightists tried to disrupt it, but the entire street where the new headquarters is located was patrolled by dozens of police officers, and the protesters did not succeed.
By the way, one of the main claims of the ultra-right against the LGBT community is the alleged non-participation of LGBT people in the war against the Russian occupiers and almost aiding them. But the Kharkiv Pride headquarters assures that this is a lie and homophobic propaganda.
“LGBT people, just like other Ukrainians, volunteered in the first days of the war, they are called up to the army just like everyone else. We, those who are not in the army, donate, volunteer, buy cars and drones, weave camouflage nets. We love Ukraine, we are patriots,” explains one of the Kharkiv Pride activists, Maria (name changed), in pure literary Ukrainian.
Maria’s speech is interrupted by another alarm: a bomber has taken off again in the Belgorod region, which means that KABs will soon be falling on Kharkov or its suburbs.
“Let’s go to the back room, away from the entrance and windows,” orders a short-haired girl in an embroidered shirt with a pattern in the rainbow colors traditional for the LGBT community. “Safety first.”
The pride participants drop everything they are doing — selling souvenirs, drawing funny faces on the wall, discussing the news, taking photos in the corner marked “Marriage Zone,” weaving camouflage netting — and run to the far room. Only a couple dozen students of the tactical medicine master class remain in place. The young tattooed teacher, not distracted by the howl of the siren, continues to talk about the differences between venous and arterial bleeding and shows on herself where to attach tourniquets to stop the bleeding.
The alarm lasts only a few minutes. It seems that the occupiers have bombed those areas of the Kharkiv region that are closer to the border with Russia. But Kharkiv also gets it that day. Russian bombs fall in different areas of the city, walls partially collapse and glass flies out in several houses. In general, finding a house in which all the windows are intact is an almost impossible task.
Finding a house in Kharkov with all the windows intact is an almost impossible task
It would probably be easier to find a dozen houses without a single window left. Both in the center and in residential areas, entire blocks of buildings stand with window frames boarded up with plywood and once-glazed facades. Some of these plywood panels are painted with patriotic pictures, but most are just yellow sheets that have taken the place of windows knocked out by the blast or shrapnel.
Despite the constant shelling, restaurants and cafes are open in the city, shopping centers and markets are open. Even the zoo continues to operate, and completely free of charge. And the visitors, of whom there are quite a lot, and the inhabitants of the zoo no longer react in any way to the constantly howling sirens, or to the explosions, the sounds of which reach here from time to time.
Monuments of (imperialist) culture
A 15-minute walk from the zoo is one of the most controversial monuments in Kharkiv. It is dedicated to the memory of local internationalist soldiers who died in the countless wars waged by the USSR far from its borders. Just a year ago, in addition to the usual mentions on such monuments of those who died in Afghanistan, Angola and Mozambique, there was also a slab with the names of Kharkiv Red Army soldiers who died in 1939 in Western Ukraine. That is, those who actually started World War II in alliance with the Nazis, and even fought, including against their own Ukrainian brothers from Lviv and Ternopil.
Now this slab is gone. It was dismantled, and without much publicity. Just as the bust of Pushkin was dismantled not long before. At the same time, the city has plenty of controversial monuments that the authorities do not demolish. For example, the monument to the mythical (if not to say “fairytale”) founder of the city, the Cossack Kharko by Zurab Tsereteli, which once caused a lot of protests among patriotic Kharkov residents, still stands in its place, and is even protected from Russian missiles and bombs by sandbags and boards no worse than the main monument of Kharkov – the monument to Taras Shevchenko on Sumskaya.
The monument to the mythical founder of the city, the Cossack Kharko, by Zurab Tsereteli, is protected from Russian missiles by sandbags and boards no worse than the monument to Taras Shevchenko
A year ago, a British Mark V tank from the First World War was also standing in the square near the historical museum, covered with sacks, next to an unprotected Soviet T-34. Now there are no sacks on the British tank either.
But the most noticeable metamorphosis occurred with the Walk of Fame of the participants of the film festival “Kharkiv Lilac”, which was held from 2009 to 2013. Each star participant of the festival was entitled to his own memento – a metal plate with a cast of a hand, the name and surname of the actor or director. These plates on special stands were installed along one of the alleys of the central city park.
Among those marked in this way were many Russians who had made statements in support of the occupation of Crimea, approved of the seizure of Donetsk and Lugansk, supported the full-scale invasion of the occupation army into Ukraine, or illegally visited the occupied Ukrainian territories. The plaques dedicated to these people were not taken down; they were simply covered with thick white fabric covers.
On some of the signs, the inscriptions show through the tightly fitting fabric. And if you look closely, you can read the names of those they wanted to hide. Here is composer Maksim Dunaevsky, a fan of vacationing in occupied Crimea. And here is Chernihiv region native and Kharkiv Theatre Institute graduate Alexey Petrenko, who from 2014 until his death in Moscow in 2017 was never able to publicly explain his attitude to the war unleashed by Russia against his native Ukraine.
The inscriptions on the monument to the scientist Vasily Karazin, which is located next to the Kharkov University he founded, are also covered with thick opaque material. Hidden from the eyes of passersby are two plaques on different sides of the monument’s pedestal with quotes from the scientist, who died in the mid-19th century, in which he glorifies Russia and speaks of the need to work for its benefit.
In today’s times, these are not just inappropriate, but truly blasphemous words – opposite the university is the building of the Kharkiv regional administration, where 44 people were killed by a single missile strike on March 1, 2022. Behind the partially destroyed administration building, there are several more seriously damaged residential buildings and office buildings.
Among them is an old apartment building, in the basement of which was located the pub “Old Ham”, famous almost throughout the country. Nothing remains of the pub, nor of the monument to Ernest Hemingway that stood next to it, nor of the portraits of writers that hung inside, among whom was Sergei Dovlatov. The rocket fell on the building from above, breaking through several floors and exploding in the basement. Through the hole it made in the facade, you can see the apartments of Kharkov residents. There is still furniture in them, and on the walls you can even see plates with views of foreign resorts that the owners of the destroyed apartments brought back from their tourist trips.
Other signs of war
Ruins, constant shelling and covered monuments are not the only signs of war visible in Kharkov. Kharkov is defiantly sparsely populated. The metro, despite the fact that travel there, like all other municipal transport, was made free for the duration of the war, is almost never crowded. Trains run at unusually long intervals – 10 minutes on weekdays and 20 on weekends.
Schools and universities are empty. All education is either remote, via Zoom, or in underground classrooms equipped by the mayor’s office. Traffic jams, if they happen, are only due to large-scale accidents. And they, unfortunately, are frequent – there are still concrete barricades on some roads in the city, which are almost invisible in the dark. And mandatory blackouts are still in effect. Even the central streets and squares are not illuminated by street lights (an exception was made only on City Day, August 23 of this year, when all the lights were on at night in Kharkiv), and inexperienced drivers or those who do not know the road well constantly crash into obstacles, blocking entire lanes for a long time.
Inexperienced drivers or those who don’t know the road well constantly crash into obstacles, blocking entire lanes for long periods of time.
But despite the shelling, the destruction, the constant danger of being crushed by yet another rubble caused by a Russian missile, and a significant outflow of citizens, Kharkov is holding on. Long called a “Russian city” by Russian propagandists, Kharkov now demonstrates an indomitable desire never to actually become a Russian city.
The endless fences of Kharkiv industrial zones, through which the train slowly crawls towards Poltava, were once covered with graffiti with logos of football teams and popular music groups. Now these walls are almost entirely covered with emblems of army brigades, portraits of fallen defenders of Ukraine and views of the burning Kremlin. When the train stops to let a freight train go towards Kramatorsk and Konstantinovka, you can read a short inscription made on a contact network pole in the neat handwriting of an excellent schoolgirl…
“Russians, you’re screwed,” reads this sign, the last one on the way out of the city.