“Why would we want to go out when every step is a lottery with our lives!” Nastya, a 23-year-old subway station attendant, told The Daily Beast. (Due to the tense security situation, many residents felt uncomfortable giving their last names.) Like most Kharkovites, he rarely goes out. “Initially we divided the city into dangerous areas such as the center and east of the city near the Russian lines and other areas that we considered safer.” But last week, she says, she went to visit her family in a former untouched area of ​​Kharkiv. “As soon as I got there, they started bombing it!” He said. “Nowhere in the city is it safe.” Ruined buildings in Kharkov.

Tom Moots

A Ukrainian soldier fighting on the front lines told the Daily Beast that when the war broke out, “they arrived at the gates waiting for people to run in despair as soon as they entered the city. But they did not. On the contrary, they reacted. ” The unprepared and poorly equipped Russian force was quickly repulsed from the city. Thus, the Russians abandoned the attempt to occupy Kharkov. Instead, they sit behind ditches just 10 miles from the city and subject it to one of the most ruthless bombings of a European city since World War II. If they can not have the city, they want to make life here so unbearable that it is uninhabitable. Thousands of buildings have been destroyed and many city dwellers do not have most of them. As one resident put it, “Mariupoli is a slow move.” The irony is that Kharkiv is an almost entirely Russian-speaking city that experienced significant pro-Russian protests in response to the Maidan uprising eight years ago. No one knows it better than Father Vassilis, the 50-year-old Priest of the Church of the Holy Myrrh-bearing Women in the center of Kharkov. Dressed in a black robe and an elaborate silver cross around his neck, he showed his hand to show a large piece of shrapnel that had been broken in his church by a missile that had hit the other side of the street. An Easter Sunday service had just ended, with mostly elderly parishioners who could not or did not want to leave their city. “150 meters from this church, there is the Russian Pushkin Drama Theater. About 600 meters from here, there is the Kharkiv National University, which has a department of Russian language and literature. There are three to four streets nearby named by prominent Russian poets and writers: Pushkinskaya, Lermodovskaya, Dostoyevskov… they came to “de-Nazify” what? Their people and their language! ” thundered in The Daily Beast. Despite the close cultural and personal ties between Russia and eastern Ukraine, the Russians have caused terrible pain to people in this part of the country. “I served the first years of my ministry in a parish in the Borovskii area. Now there are Russian troops there. Life there is not just frozen – it is several decades back. There are robberies, raids and rapes. I say it with a lot of pain “, said father Vassilis. The sadness in his voice turns to anger when he begins to describe the actions of the Orthodox Patriarch in Moscow who recently gave his holy blessing to Putin’s war: “We are ashamed of the Russian Orthodox Church. We used to be a part of it. And now we are ashamed of it. We are ashamed of the patriarch who is silent. “They are declaring war.” A child from Ukraine is standing next to the wreckage of the Russian bombing.

Alexander Chan

This absurd agony can be found all over the city. The Daily Beast visited several recent bombing sites, including a market in the heavily damaged Saltivka district, which was hit just two days ago. We could not find any signs of troop movements or debris that would be expected from military activity in these locations. Instead, there was the charred remains of clothes, shoes and books sold by the various shops. Alexander Vasil, a 37-year-old peacemaker, woke up at 3:30 a.m. from the blast. He showed the Daily Beast a photo he had taken with a sign that read “I Love Kharkiv” while the buildings behind it were completely burned. He said that while no one was in the market at the time, many people living in the surrounding area were injured in the blast and were told that at least one elderly resident had died of a heart attack caused by shock. Vassil said he decided to stay in the area to help those around him and to help people living underground at the metro station. “We have not had hot water or electricity since the beginning of the war,” he said, “but we are used to it. “We just wash with cold water.” Its windows have been broken for a long time, but like most people in the city, he said the endless explosions and bombings were combined into one and people are no longer shocked by it. Trade in the city has virtually stopped. A single cafe called Protagonist opens for a few hours in the afternoon and serves mainly soldiers and journalists. But life in the city continues and the remaining residents refuse to retreat. “This is my house, why should we ever be forced to leave?” said Anna Subotina, a tattoo artist who has defiantly kept the studio open despite the devastation that has befallen its surroundings. The usual crowd of customers has been replaced by soldiers taking their unit insignia or various military symbols with ink on them before going to the front line. “Nothing is open and they have nothing to spend their money on, so they spend it here.” The most popular tattoo by far these days was that of a rifle or AK-47. For Father Vassilis, hope lies in the youth of Kharkov. “What makes me happiest is the young people, the volunteers,” he said. “Many of them have cars and money and everything, they could leave, but they chose to stay.”