Russia-Ukraine War: Kharkiv, the city that moved to subway stations because of the bombing

The group of Clarion He again crossed the country this morning towards the combat zones and arrived at noon on Monday in the city of Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine and the military logistics center where local fighting forces in the Donbas are deployed. ATthe front of the war for the north of the disputed cordon to the east.

Kharkiv is bsiege of garlic by the Russian army from the first day of the war. The invading forces are only 20 kilometers from the city (the Russian border is 50 kilometers away). The situation is serious as it has been hit hard by enemy gunfire and artillery and missile bombardment continues.

Much of the city was devastated, devastated to the ground, and the number of civilian victims of the bombing was increasing. On Sunday, authorities asked residents that even though the air-raid sirens did not sound, they stayed in their homes because the Russians fired with mortars and artillery.

In Kharkiv the curfews will start at 9 pm. The sound of the alarms was constant and the report of the effects became frequent. Kharkiv was living like kyiv in March, when Russian troops tried to enter from Bucha and Irpin. However, supply is guaranteed and digital connectivity, a great saving tool during the war, remains stable.

Directly large part of the population did not leave the subway bomb shelters. The one in Kharkiv, unlike the one in kyiv, became a full-stay site, with neighbors directly living there.

Hospitals in Kharkiv are also living non -stop. For doctors there is no word of calm. They pass through during a permanent emergency. They did not stop receiving the wounded, coming from the great outskirts of the city and from nearby villages. Most of them were civilians hit by missile splinters.

A surgeon who served as a contact for Clarion and received this group in the city, he asked newspaper correspondents for a series of specific drugs for patients recovering from neurosurgery and lacking supply in hospitals. Oleksii Otkydach, local producer and interpreter of Clarín’s team, launched a collection through social networks announcing that she was going to Kharkiv and that she needed to buy medicines.

He put his credit card into PayPal, posted the link, and quickly took the money he needed to buy what he wanted. He had money left over and went back to an Odessa pharmacy to further strengthen the lot. This is a very concrete example of the widespread sense of cooperation that prevails among all generations of Ukrainians, 68 days after the start of the war.

The Ukrainian resistance in Kharkiv, which intensified and demonstrated its capacity and military training, was able to slow enemy advance. In recent days, they have re-occupied the sites that fell into the hands of Russia and are now re-arranging to keep it in a line further away from the urban area.

They are different armies that are fighting. An article published by an analyst in a local newspaper outlined the class differences that exist between the two armies, not only in Kharkiv, but throughout Ukraine. The Ukrainian military is diverse. It consists of traders, graduates, agricultural producers, youth, the elderly. Most of them are volunteers. They don’t fight for money. There is greater human intelligence running throughout your unit, as well as modern military training and knowledge of war strategies.

The invading army was just the opposite: it was made up of very poor and untrained people. They were promised money to come and fight, but Moscow did not give. Many of these men came from the Caucasus and were descendants of the original people. Their educational background is invalid or low. They lack good equipment and that explains the habit of theft they commit whenever they manage to take over a town. But then they didn’t know what to do in the face of the waiting resistance that was waiting and they quickly moved into a defensive position and finally collapsed.

About two million people live in Kharkiv. It was the capital of Ukraine during the Soviet Union until 1934 due to the large proletarian population, which was naturally considered valuable by the communist government. From Moscow in the early Soviet years, kyiv was seen as a place of elites, where Ukrainian was spoken and not Russian, and Kharkiv as an example of collective strength and Russian-speaking capital. The space industry, steel, railways, technical science, military weapons, even today these industries give strength to the region and for this economic character, Kharkiv is also admired by the Kremlin.

Before the war, Kharkiv competed to be the cleanest, most preserved and most modern city in Ukraine, even disputing that throne from beautiful Odessa. The local government, moreover, is equally in the sense of defending the Ukrainian identity. Igor Trejov, its mayor, addressed kyiv and even President Zelensky. He was not seen as pro-Russian, but out of discussion about the coming war. Once the bombing began, death and destruction changed his position drastically and closed the ranks of the Ukrainian president. Like almost the whole country.