Now, finally living behind the ground, his favorite book is A Multitude of Rabbits, about a community of fun-loving rabbits that live underground while avoiding foxes above. “We were like these rabbits,” said Danil, who misses the friends he made with other kids who had camped on the subway. “Because he had fun down there.” Danil Baranovsky, 8, said he enjoyed living in subway tunnels in Kharkov, Ukraine, during Russia’s attack on the city. His mother has a clearly less rosy impression of the situation. (Jason Ho / CBC) Danil and his family were among those who left the subway stations they had been sheltering for weeks and months in late May after Ukrainian forces pushed Russian troops far enough from the city center to offer some relief. the constant bombing Kharkiv withstood the war. But with the Russians digging in locations north of Kharkov, and the Russian border just 50 kilometers away, remote neighborhoods continue to come under fire. On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he believed the Russian army was “trying to mobilize forces to attack Kharkov again.” Unsurprisingly, Danil’s mother, Elena Baranovska, holding his eight-month-old sister in her arms, has a very different memory from their underground days. “It was very difficult,” he said. “Because you can not clean and wash your children there. It was cold and wet. [The baby] it was very small. “It’s good that I was breastfeeding.” The family home from which they escaped in March, in a village called Korobochkyno, southeast of Kharkov, is no longer there. “When we left, only the windows were broken,” Baranovoska said of their former home. “Also the doors and the fence.” Elena Baranowska, who lived in subway tunnels with her family for months during the Russian attacks in Kharkov, is holding her baby, Camilla, while her eight-year-old son Daniel is reading. (Jason Ho / CBC) “Now there is nothing, and it is very difficult because I have nowhere to go back. What will I do with my children? I do not know.”
The displaced families moved to a dormitory
At present, she and her husband live in a single room offered by the city in a dormitory. The dormitory is located on a single floor in a building that also houses a bakery. Residents share a shared kitchen and bathrooms. Every knock on the door in a long, dimly lit hallway is answered with similar stories. A shared room in a dormitory for people who have lost their homes in Kharkov. (Jason Ho / CBC) Larisa Nesterenko is a woman of faith, a Bible spread out on a neat table, also holding flowers in a vase and covered with a checkered plastic tablecloth. Four single beds are made with military precision and each object in the room has a defined position, right up to the neat row of shoes on a rack next to the wall. Nesterenko, a widow, was actually working for the Kharkiv metro when the war broke out. When her neighborhood came under fire, she soon found herself living there as well, leaving the apartment where she lived with her daughter, grandson and son-in-law. “By the end of February, our house had already been bombed,” she said, often overwhelmed with emotion, with tears running down her cheeks. “The main thing is that we have a roof over our heads [now]. “
“How could this happen?”
Nesterenko was able to visit her apartment a month ago, returning in search of documents that left her in a hurry to leave. A rocket had hit the apartment above hers, causing it to catch fire. It shows a video with what is left behind: a basket of eggs on a counter, still intact, while everything around it is charred. a teapot standing on a pile of burnt debris. A damaged apartment building is depicted in the Saltivka district of Kharkov, the area most affected by the Russian bombing. (Jason Ho / CBC) “My whole cupboard was full of pickled vegetables,” he said. “Everything burned. The jars fell and broke. The child’s room. The living room. It seems to me that I never had furniture.” Her biggest loss, however, is more personal than the apartment she tried so hard to keep. The photos of her late husband were also destroyed. “How could it happen that our so-called brother, Russia, attacked Ukraine? I can not understand that, even now.” Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine before the invasion, is a Russian-speaking city. Its proximity to the Russian border means more cross-border traffic and family ties on the other hand. Many Kharkiv residents say these ties have now been irrevocably broken. The mayor of the city, Ihor Terkhov, said that the bombing of Kharkov by Russia had left about 150,000 people homeless. It was Terkhov’s decision to restart the metro system, which is now free for all passengers, as the city tries to encourage people – and the economy – to get back to work.
Pressing humanitarian needs
As people reappear or begin to return to the city, the humanitarian needs are great. A recent food distribution point run by the universal charity Caritas has attracted a huge crowd in central Kharkov. Quarrels erupted after rumors that there would not be enough bags of food for everyone waiting. Natalia Desiatinnikova, left, and her granddaughter Sofia are collecting food aid in Kharkov in June. After the bombing of the city by Russia, many residents needed humanitarian aid. (Jason Ho / CBC) A Caritas employee at the scene said the charity feeds at least 3,000 people every day in different parts of the city. Natalia Desiatinnikova is one of them. The 57-year-old had her three-year-old granddaughter in tow who helped her transport some of the canned meat and water bottles on offer. “Our lives have changed completely,” Desiatinnikova said. “Living under bombardment is very difficult. It is very difficult when your children are scared. It is difficult not to have a job.” There are some restaurants and cafes that are starting to reopen in Kharkov, but many more are still closed. Kharkiv residents are receiving food aid from a charity as it returns to normalcy after the city was bombed by Russia. (Jason Ho / CBC) Desiatinnikova believes it is still very dangerous for people who left the city in the early days of the bombing to consider returning. “It’s not worth coming back yet. Why [there is] bombings continue to take place daily. “Like in a program,” he said. “It’s too early for me to return. We hear it in the city center but also in the suburbs “.
Destroyed neighborhoods
Saltivka, a neighborhood in northern Kharkiv, has been hit hardest by Russian bombs and rockets. It was full of densely populated apartment buildings before the war. Those still standing are full of holes, blackened by fire. A building was hit by rockets on 11 different occasions, according to a resident who had returned to make sure no one was looting his apartment. Debris from a damaged apartment building is depicted in the Saltivka neighborhood of Kharkov. (Jason Ho / CBC) Part of the facade of the building simply fell, revealing a damaged staircase, the innards of the construction and the lives of the people who lived there. Tables are floating on the edge of nothing, radiators are hanging between the floors. Saltivka remains one of the most exposed parts of Kharkiv. When it is bombed, the rest of the city can hear it. That was enough to keep some people underground, with permission to remain in some subway stations, in corners hidden away from passenger traffic. “It’s scary what is happening in the north of the city, in Saltivka,” said Ruslan Omelnik, who used to live repairing printers. “There are explosions. And we are afraid to leave the shelter because the bombs are still flying.”
“Waiting for bombs to fall every day”
Omelnik and about eight others have set up their mattresses behind the escalators at a central station. There is a table with a microwave, water bottles and boxes to delimit people’s personal space. Another station, closer to Saltivka, reportedly has about 50 people still living underground. Omelnik moved to the shelter for the first time, not far from his own apartment, a few days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24. CLOCKS Russian forces repulsed in Kharkov, but attacks continue:
Russian forces repulsed in Kharkov, but attacks continue
The CBC News team in Ukraine goes to Kharkov, the second largest city in the country. Civilians there spent months sheltering in the metro system, while Russian forces bombed the city. “At first I went to the basement and stayed there for a while. But when the planes started flying over us, I couldn’t stand it and I came here,” Omelnik said. His apartment has not been damaged, but he is still unwilling to leave the subway, acknowledging that he is likely to suffer psychological trauma. His wife and daughter, he said, are in Lviv, a relatively safe city in western Ukraine. “I was offered to talk to a psychologist, but it is very difficult to overcome your fear. Because when you go out [of the subway] and at night you hear explosions, it makes you paranoid. You wait for bombs to fall every day. “I want to be home, but I can not force myself to do it.” He is also convinced that the Russians will return to Kharkov. “They have more weapons. And strength. And they are probably more likely to return.”
