Yaroslav Trofimov AT yarotrof
Day by day, Kharkiv — Ukraine’s second largest city — is being wiped off the face of the earth by relentless Russian shelling. My report from the post-apocalyptic wasteland where survivors cut down trees to cook on open fires amid destroyed high-rises.
Wall street Journal - Surviving in Kharkiv
Ms. Yevtukhova, 63, who lives with her son Pasha and their cat Motik, hasn’t had electricity or running water since her nine-story housing block in Kharkiv’s North Saltivka neighborhood was first hit by Russian artillery on March 3. They are alive because a shell went right through her apartment and came out on the other side, without exploding.
“Luckily there is a stream nearby, and we can fetch some water,” she said as a neighbor hacked down a tree branch for firewood. “We are a family, all three of us taking care of each other.”
And
“Usually, it seems empty, like nobody lives here,” Ms. Yevtukhova said. “But when volunteers arrive with food, people come out of their hiding everywhere.”
And
“The geographical area of the shelling and the intensity of it are increasing. The objective of the Russian aggressor is to sow panic and create a collapse,” Mr. Terekhov said Friday. “The Russian aggressor is not ceasing attempts to attack Kharkiv and it’s not being successful only because our military is managing to repel these efforts.”
And
“At first, there was total panic. But by now, people understand better when it’s incoming shelling, when it’s outgoing, and when they need to run for cover. People are organizing themselves to survive this,” said Kseniya Tumanovska, executive director of the Dobra Volya, an aid group that helps distribute food donations.
Municipal services continue to operate, with street sweepers cleaning the roads even as shells hiss overhead. The mayor, Mr. Terekhov, has said flowers would be planted again on the main squares. Firefighters keep showing up in the most dangerous areas to douse fires despite the Russian strategy of double-tapping strike sites to hit rescue crews.
And
“We get shelled every single bloody day. We don’t replace windows anymore, just put up some plastic sheets. What is the point of glass windows if you know they will get shattered within a day or two?” said Vlad Pokutnev, who lives in the next building and helps feed some 30 mostly elderly residents hiding in the high-rise’s basement.
Down the road, two paramedics and a bystander, Maksym, who narrowly escaped being hit by shrapnel himself, were carefully extracting the carbonized remains of a man and a woman incinerated when a Grad rocket hit their hatchback car. Their remains fell apart when the paramedics tried to pry them out.
“The skull, don’t forget the skull,” Maksym, wearing two pairs of latex gloves, told the paramedics in bright-red overalls and body armor. He then picked up two other body parts, impossible to identify, and carefully deposited them on the ground.
And
The Ukrainian army chaplain bringing food to Ms. Yevtukhova’s block in North Saltivka, Vladyslav, said that he had convinced 46 residents to leave for safer parts of Ukraine, but many others have refused.
“Sometimes I go to the basement, sometimes I stay in my place. I am scared, of course, but what can we do?” said one of the holdouts, Yuriy Kinshakov, a 53-year-old engineer. “Some people from the building are gone, to Poland, to western Ukraine. Others have nowhere to go. But it’s not just a question of money: We don’t want to abandon our country.”
And
Andriy Ocheredko, a sociologist who used to run a polling company in Kharkiv before the February invasion, poured his own savings into a venture to feed North Saltivka’s residents. He filled a warehouse with oranges, pomegranates, potatoes, eggplants and onions and installed a small bakery, with a dough kneader and an oven.
His own office around the corner was remade into a large kitchen, with a dishwasher and a stove where volunteers make hearty lunches that are served every afternoon to some 600 people in the safety of a nearby subway station.
On Tuesday night, Russian rockets destroyed the warehouse, the bakery and refrigerators full of milk for the neighborhood’s children just as Mr. Ocheredko received supplies to bake Orthodox Easter cakes. “I’m lucky I didn’t stay here overnight,” he said as he showed the warehouse, which was still smoldering two days later. “I was in shock. All I kept thinking was: What will I cook with? There are so many people who have nothing else to eat.”^