Yulia rebenko’s hands were covered in blood; and unlike Lady Macbeth, she was not hallucinating. Quick thinking saved the first-year psychology student from probable death: she ran from her kitchen to the bathroom as soon as she heard the first thuds. By the time the artillery reached her flat on Shakespeare Street on the afternoon of May 26th, slicing through the сhestnut trees to land outside her window, Ms Rebenko was two walls away from the impact. She walked away with minor cuts. At least nine others ended up in the morgue. Dina Kirsanova, a shopkeeper at a milk kiosk near the 23 August metro station, the main target of the strikes, saw at least 15 missiles in the sky. Air defences intercepted most of them, she said, preventing even greater loss of life: “It’s beyond cruel. There are no military positions here. Just simple people, trying to survive.”
The renewed attacks on Kharkiv come as part of what increasingly looks like a second phase of the war. After pulling back from Kyiv, the capital, and several other northern cities during April, Russia has been rebuilding its badly mauled forces, and concentrating its efforts in the east. The fiercest upsurge in the fighting is taking place in the province of Luhansk, part of the Donbas area, where Russia is hoping to take control of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, the last towns of reasonable size that it does not hold there, and encircle its Ukrainian defenders. But it seems also to be pushing back farther north. On a rare trip outside Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Kharkiv and troops in the region on May 29th.
As a result, Ukraine’s second city, a proud, gutsy, working-class centre, faces a most uncertain future. Because it is only 40km from Russia, few thought Kharkiv stood any chance of withstanding an invasion. In the event, enemy armour was inside the sprawling city boundaries within the first three days. But a combination of spirited resistance and a reluctance by Moscow to commit the kind of forces needed to encircle the city meant Kharkiv somehow survived. In mid-May, Ukraine counter-attacked and retook several villages to the north and north-east. Many people began to hope normal life was possible; some even began to return home. The reality has proven more sobering. The northern parts of the city remain within range of Russia’s long-range artillery, as the Shakespeare Street attack demonstrated. The Russians are also digging in, reinforcing their positions in a way that will make pushing them back again very difficult.
Governor Oleh Synyehubov says the battle for Kharkiv does not look like it will end soon. “We understand it isn’t a one-month story, and we will need to live within this new reality.” The governor’s own life has been upended; he has been without an office ever since a Russian cruise missile took out his headquarters in March. He meets for an interview at a secret address, communicated only at the last minute. Just over half of Kharkiv’s 1.5m people have left, he says. Everyone who remained is vulnerable to Russian jets, rockets, and, in places, artillery; they should stay at home unless they have an urgent need to be on the streets. Some appear to be heeding the advice. But others defiantly ignore it. The Ditch, a cocktail bar 2km from Shakespeare Street, continued with its plans to re-open after three months despite the renewed missile strikes. “Artillery doesn’t faze us any more,” said Daria Taran, barman and co-owner. “We know a missile might have our name on it. But that’s fate.”
Over at the city’s gigantic Barabashova market, once the beating heart of Kharkiv trade, but now mostly reduced to scorched rubble, a couple of shopkeepers are daring to set up again. Iryna Petrovna has returned to sell flasks and metal pans. But her inventory is Chinese, and with Ukraine’s ports under Russian blockade, she knows she is unlikely to get new stocks. “We’re scared as hell, but what else can we do? We need to work.” Next door, Sergei Ivanov is searching through a sea of broken crockery and shrapnel in the hope of finding something to sell again. He’d bought two containers’ worth of plates from France ahead of Women’s Day on March 8th, he says. “It was luxury stuff. Luminarc.” It isn’t clear where either trader might find customers. The only other souls at the market are clearing rubble. Timur, a man with an intense blue-eyed stare and alcoholic breath, directs us to a pile of Russian Grad missiles he collected from the last attack on May 17th. The former builder says he is paid 500 hryvnia a day ($17) for doing this. It doesn’t go far with two children to feed, he says, but there isn’t much else on offer in Kharkiv.
The Barabashova market lies at one end of the sprawling Saltivka district—a tough, Soviet-built prefab jungle that owing to its northern position has borne the brunt of Russian violence. It used to be called the Moscow district, but like many other Russian-themed names, that was changed in May. In safer parts of the city, people are returning, but here the traffic is resolutely one-way. Residents are returning to pick up whatever possessions they can before scarpering: paintings, televisions, fridges, air-conditioning units, toilet fittings. Alla Yaroslavtseva, 57, emerges from the charred ruins of 80 Natalii Uzvii Street, which is missing a midsection, clutching a handful of memories. She doubts she will ever return. She worked all her life to buy her flat outright in the hope that she could pass it on to her children, she says. “Now I have to start again because the fucking Russian World decided to come and liberate me. From what? From my apartment? From my home?”
Ms Yaroslavtseva's anger is testament to a shift in a city that many Ukrainians assumed to be sympathetic to Russia. Scores are switching from speaking Russian to Ukrainian, even though it clearly doesn’t come naturally. “I want my son to get nauseated by the sound of Russian,” says Bohdan, a driver from Saltivka, who claims to speak Ukrainian fluently, but clearly doesn’t. For Serhiy Zhadan, a prominent local author and poet, who stayed despite being a likely target for Russian hit squads, the assumptions were always false. A strong regional identity and linguistic preferences were taken to mean much more than their parts, he said. “Russians also thought they would be met by flowers, and they also didn’t understand us.” As Kharkiv looks toward its future, a sense of solidarity in shared tragedy offered some hope, he says. But with shelling and death a reality for the foreseeable future, locals would need an “Israeli” mindset to survive. “Russia isn’t going away. We have to get used to living with a crazy neighbour.”
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