A City Under Fire, Kharkiv Fights the Russians on the Home Front

KHARKIV, Ukraine — Kharkiv is a city under fire. Russian shelling is a constant condition and one to which Kharkivites have become largely accustomed.Amid streets littered with broken glass and shrapnel and the ever-present danger of incoming ordnance, life adjusts to wartime constraints — and stubbornly persists in the face of the Russian war machine.On the battlefield, Ukrainian soldiers are fighting for the very survival of their nation. They are backed up by a ferocious resistance fought by Kharkivites on the home front.Russian forces moved across the Ukraine-Russia border on February 24 and quickly reached the edge of Kharkiv. Ukrainian counteroffensives prevented the city from falling, though Kharkiv sustained extensive damage in the subsequent fighting.There are no more running gun battles against Russian forces in the city’s streets, but spent ammunition casings and shrapnel-pocked facades pay silent testament to savage urban combat.Martial law governs Ukraine and provides local authorities the legal framework to impose nightly restrictions on Kharkivites’ outdoor movement.Except for a smattering of supermarkets and cafes, most businesses have shuttered, and those few stores that remain open abbreviate their hours to give employees a chance to reach home before curfew.Grocer’s shelves are lightly stocked but not bare, and basic foodstuffs like eggs, coffee, and bread are amply available. Buying alcohol is not forbidden, though it is frowned upon.Russian positions ring Kharkiv’s northeast, in places a mere five miles from the city’s outskirts. The Russian border is just 30 miles away, a boon for Russian forces near Kharkiv who can count on steady resupply.Today, rifle fire is replaced by the low boom of distant artillery and the rapid staccato of Grad multiple rocket launcher impacts, shattering the thin windowpanes in Kharkiv’s many Soviet-era apartment buildings, even from distant explosions.City sanitation operates unabated in Kharkiv, and unlike many other cities in Ukraine, the streets are surprisingly well-swept and give the destruction an orderly, almost tidy feel.Testimony from multiple Kharkivites illustrates the symbiotic relationship between the city’s residents and the soldiers defending the city, a relationship that is deeply meaningful to both sides.Natalia, a 37-year-old mother of two from Kharkiv, is fully cognizant of the danger of staying but won’t leave her city anytime soon. “Why would I leave the city?” she asked rhetorically.She gave birth to her daughters Sasha and Masha, 11 and 15, in Kharkiv. “If we leave, what will the soldiers be protecting?” she asks.Although the locus of this conflict has shifted to Ukrainian regions farther east, Russia pounds the city daily with long-range and highly imprecise fire intentionally designed to sow terror and anxiety into Kharkivite’s psyche.Slava, a middle-aged barkeep, explained over a pizza box that Russian fire is both incessant and unpredictable and of little military significance.Motioning to a burnt-out open-air market, Slava pointed out that the strike several days previously hit absolutely nothing of military value and destroyed his livelihood.Slava lives just a five-minute walk from the bar, and the early-morning explosion rattled his windows, waking up virtually everyone in his apartment building.He showed The New York Sun a photo he snapped in the aftermath of the explosion: orange flames float inside the charred steel skeletons of market stalls. Though that explosion was quite close, he is used the Russian wake-up calls. In a twist of irony, an unexploded rocket from the morning bombardment buried itself in the pavement at the market’s edge, 20 feet in front of a large sculpture that reads “I love Kharkiv.”Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second city, and hosts several prominent universities that feed into local information technology companies and industrial corporations. The city enjoyed a reputation as Ukraine’s up-and-coming tech hub.Before this conflict, brothers Alexander and Pavel, 44 and 37, worked for a cryptocurrency trading platform. But between distributing medical supplies throughout the city and their limited electricity access at home, they no longer work.They live in the same building as Slava, and while they do have running water, gas is intermittent. They haven’t had hot water in more than two months and see flashes from explosions almost every night.Their lives today are busier than their pre-February 24 lives. Most days, they work ferrying food, diesel generators, and medicine boxes throughout the city. “I’m tired,” Pavel said but added that he’s “still strong.”Though deeply meaningful, their work helping Kharkiv’s most vulnerable is grim. The brothers crack jokes with a nonchalance afforded by living in the persistent shadow of Russian forces.On Easter, celebrated last Sunday by Orthodox Christians, the brothers had gifts for citizens and soldiers. They explained that they passed out chocolates to Kharkiv’s children and gifted soldiers with brightly painted grenades — an Easter treat for the Russians.Solidarity with the Ukrainian forces defending the city is more than just jokes and gestures. Some Kharkivites are sinking their savings — and risking their lives — for the fight on the home front.Viacheslav B., a 29-year-old computer programmer who asked the Sun to abbreviate his last name, manages a volunteer kitchen that prepares meals deep inside Kharkiv. Now on an extended and unplanned sabbatical, he defends Ukraine “with food.”From inside the kitchen, carefully disguised to hide its true purpose from Russian reconnaissance drones, Viacheslav explained that he had the opportunity to leave Kharkiv when this conflict re-erupted but chose to stay.“Kharkiv needs supplies,” Viacheslav explained. “But supplies are not enough without logistics, without coordinators who can find people who need them, without cooks who can make fresh food for those who can’t do it themselves.”The all-volunteer kitchen sources foodstuffs from supermarkets and donations, but they have also purchased some ingredients they couldn’t source with their own money.Inside the hidden kitchen, a dozen volunteers chop vegetables, fold dough, snip plucked chickens, and process meat from sides of beef.With these basic ingredients, the Kharkivite cooks prepare homemade loaves of bread and towering aluminum pots of soup — enough food for 600 meals a day.Viacheslav won’t say exactly where they send the food but explains that they pack hundreds of meals into airtight plastic containers and distribute them throughout the city and the greater Kharkiv Oblast region.For Viacheslav, cooking is more than just his service to Kharkiv, it is his duty. “I can’t sit and just wait, I need to do something to end this madness,” Viacheslav said. “Who if not me should be doing this?”

A City Under Fire, Kharkiv Fights the Russians on the Home Front

A City Under Fire, Kharkiv Fights the Russians on the Home Front

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