At Home In Kharkiv, My City Under Siege

RFE
22 Apr 2024

Ten years after witnessing Russian-backed separatists attempt to seize her native city of Kharkiv, photographer Olga Ivashchenko returned to witness what may be the beginning of another attempt by Russia to seize Ukraine's second city by force.

View from a high -rise building during a blackout in Kharkiv on April 5

When I'm away from Kharkiv it seems like anything could happen to the city. I start thinking that Russians will destroy the energy system, that Kharkiv could be surrounded. It's only 30 kilometers from the Russian border, after all. Then I return and spend some time here and I start to feel confident that the city will survive.

Children attend a swimming class during a blackout in Kharkiv on April 8.

I'm not sure what gives me such faith in the city, perhaps it's the ordinary people I see helping small businesses to rebuild after a missile strike, or the children learning to swim in the light of flashlights during a blackout. Maybe it's just the optimism of springtime.

Women walk through a suburb of Kharkiv as a brush fire burns on April 9.

I realized war was coming on March 1, 2014. I was in my friend's kitchen watching television that day as the Russian Duma authorized the use of Russian troops abroad. I told my friends then that war lay ahead. This was before the annexation of Crimea or war in the Donbas, it was all just beginning.

Wounded supporters of Ukraine's new government are made to kneel on Kharkiv's central square by pro-Russian crowds on March 1, 2014. Euromaidan protests had ousted Ukraine's Kremlin-aligned president, Viktor Yanukovych, from power in Kyiv several days earlier.

In March 2014, there were different rallies being held across Kharkiv. Pro-Russian crowds gathered under the Lenin monument, while opposing rallies waved Ukrainian flags near the statue of Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko.

A masked member of Ukraine's special forces stands outside Kharkiv's regional administration building on April 8, 2014.

Pro-Ukrainian demonstrators seized Kharkiv's administration building, then separatist crowds stormed inside and attacked them. The Ukrainians were led outside for a kind of humiliation ritual. A gauntlet was formed and I watched as people were forced to walk through while being kicked and hit with bags. Then the pro-Ukrainians were forced to kneel in the main square as people spat on them and some were beaten.

That day the Russian flag was raised over the administration building.

A party in a penthouse apartment of a high rise building in Kharkiv during a blackout. Due to the lack of electricity the lift wasn't working and guests had to walk up 24 flights of stairs to reach the gathering.

Today Kharkiv is considered so dangerous that foreign journalists try not to stay overnight. The city is hit daily with everything from cheap aerial bombs that can land anywhere, to accurate and expensive missiles.

But at the same time, my friends here go to work and raise their kids. It's hard for me to reconcile these two worlds.

Emergency workers pick through Kharkiv's heavily damaged thermal power plant after it was hit by a Russian missile in March.

When I go on a reporting trip to Kharkiv, I try to find a safe hotel, preferably somewhere below ground level. Then when I go to visit my friends, I sleep soundly on the 24th floor and don't even respond to the air-raid sirens that howl constantly.

Central Kharkiv on April 9, 2024.

My most vivid memory from this trip to Kharkiv was an emergency worker named Oleksandr who cried as he retold the story of working at the site where a Russian drone hit an oil depot in February this year. A storage tank had ruptured and the burning fuel flowed toward nearby houses, trapping residents in a flood of fire. From one house the rescuer had to pull out the bodies of an entire family of five people, one after another.

Emergency workers wait in a basement for an air-raid alert to end before continuing work at the site of an aerial bomb strike in central Kharkiv on April 7.

It's hard to guess what was going through the mind of the father who perished inside his house alongside his family. Oleksandr told me he ran through the scenarios endlessly in his head. Perhaps the father thought it was safest to stay inside the house because the yard outside was burning, but they had no chance.

The whole family -- father, mother, children aged 7 and 4, and a baby aged just 10 months -- all perished in the flames.

People gather to socialize in central Kharkiv amid frequent Russian strikes.

I don't know what the future holds for Kharkiv. After my most recent trip I had the sense I should advise my parents to sell their house in the region, but in the end I didn't have the heart to tell them.