KHARKIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s second largest city, once a Russophile stronghold, has turned sharply against the Russia of  President Putin, souring on the Kremlin since the  February 2022 invasion.

In 2014, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, pro-Moscow protestors occupied the governmental Kharkiv Regional State Administration building. They replaced the Ukrainian flag with a Russian one and, under the name Kharkiv People’s Republic, proclaimed independence from Kyiv. 

Now, residents of the predominantly Russian-speaking city about 20 miles from the border are switching their Russian language to Ukrainian. People are cutting ties with family members in Russia. Streets have been renamed. Soviet-era statues have been torn down. Russian music in public places is now considered offensive. 

“It feels wrong now to sing songs in Russian and do stand-up comedy related to Russia,” says a Kharkiv native, Yaroslav Prykhodko, who works as a translator here.

What led to the current near zero tolerance toward anything related to Russia? “There was a serious and important shift toward the perception of Russian culture, the history of the Russian empire, the history of the Soviet Union,” an assistant professor of Ukrainian history at Kharkiv National University, Denys Zhuravlev, tells the Sun. 

It’s an irony that the Russia-dominated eastern and southern regions of Ukraine have suffered most since the full-scale invasion. President Zelensky considered northeastern Kharkiv a major target in the war. During the first months following the invasion Kharkiv’s streets became a battleground, where Russian tanks beat Ukrainian troops to take over the city. 

Attitudes among Kharkiv region residents began to change following the 2014 Russian annexation of the Ukrainian southern peninsula of Crimea. Yet, until 2022, people mostly were indifferent toward Mr. Putin and Russia, as the war didn’t directly affect them, Mr. Zhuravlev says. 

Before the full invasion, 53 percent of the population in east Ukraine viewed Russia favorably, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. The western part of the region, in contrast, had the largest number of people who viewed Moscow negatively. After the invasion, however, the perception of the populations of the eastern districts shifted dramatically. Only 4 percent have a positive image of Russia, according to the latest polling conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. 

A sense of cultural autonomy is increasing, Mr. Prykhodko says, adding that the change, driven by young people, happened first in the public sphere, where singers switched from Russian to Ukrainian and stand-up comedians eliminated all Moscow-related content. 

Music has a big role in people’s minds, a 24-year-old Kharkiv native, Alex Virskovskiy, tells the Sun. Mr. Virskovskiy has recently relocated to Kyiv for his university studies. “We need more Ukrainian music,” he adds. “A lot has changed.”

Before February 2022, young people like Mr. Virskovskiy would engage with Russian counterparts through social media and video games. Games were apolitical, he says. Nobody discussed the ongoing war during their game time. “It was interesting because there was war, but nobody talked about it.”

Now, he questions how anyone could be sympathetic toward Mr. Putin when their own city is being attacked. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the intention to keep cooperation with Russia was represented by the pro-Moscow Party of Regions. Its candidate, Victor Yanukovych, won in Kharkiv in the city council elections in 2006, the 2007 parliamentary elections, and the 2010 presidential elections. 

In 2014, after being ousted by protests in many cities across Ukraine, Mr. Yanukovych fled to Kharkiv. He then moved to Crimea before, finally, reaching Russia. 

The high number of Russian natives in the eastern and southern regions is partially due to a Soviet-era policy that required all college students to relocate anywhere in the Soviet Union to work after graduation. Now, although many people in these areas still have family in Russia, many have broken ties due to the war. 

“This is one of the dramas of this war,” vice rector at Karazin National University, Anatoliy Babichev, tells the Sun. “A lot of people just stopped communicating with their relatives in Russia.”

At schools Ukrainian language courses are becoming more popular, Mr. Babichev says. For now, Kharkiv remains a predominantly Russian-speaking region. Yet “you can use the Russian language, but not support Putin at all,” Mr. Babichev says.

Moscow Avenue, one of this city’s most popular streets, was renamed Heroes of Kharkiv shortly after the full-scale invasion. The red and black flag, a symbol of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, has flown increasingly since February 2022. 

Ukrainians feel more united than they have ever been in the last 30 years, Mr. Zhuravlev says. Yet, they will face a big challenge after the war ends: defining their attitude toward Russia.

“What should we do with the Russian language, culture, and so on after the war?” Mr. Zhuravlev asks, questioning whether it will remain the same.