Kharkiv August 5th
We heard the incoming sound of rockets last night—two waves of them—and the next morning saw the result, a strike that hit a café. The blast zone is about 75m wide and has damaged, but not collapsed, the café as well as sending shrapnel across a wide area, breaking glass and shredding trees. A Metro station is ultimately thought to have been the target but even this has limited utility—there are many exits and destroying one hardly achieves anything. People seem accustomed to this.
The metro station is now a shelter—about 150 people are living here and have been for six months, either because their own homes are destroyed or their area is unsafe. As we walk through the turnstiles and descend down to the platform, people are arranged on mattresses, whole families with children, even pets. The children are joyful, like normal kids, and especially today when the volunteers have brought them toys. There is a community of sorts among the residents of this underground station and a rapport with the volunteers who have been working together with them for months.
★
Kharkiv is a beautiful city, even now, when nearly empty—half the population have left—and bearing war damage. The city nearly fell to the Russians in the opening weeks of the war but the Ukrainians fought back and through street fighting, which was apparently ferocious, pushed “the invaders” out. There is battle damage all over, into and out of the downtown where the Russian advance was halted, as well as from artillery, missile and rocket strikes, which have been nearly continuous ever since. The most notable feature of the city is the particle board hoardings over most buildings—all glass has to be covered. Indeed, this is an ongoing project of city council, one of the remarkable things that a community under fire accomplishes. Public transport is free and water and electricity are all working. Take note, South Africa.
A front line has stabilised beyond city limits, but the fighting has not stopped. Territory is exchanged and rocket attacks on the city continue, although this is far from the front line and for the most part on residential areas. Even this sunny afternoon is punctured by the occasional thump! of an incoming rocket exploding somewhere. Please, not here.
Kharkiv is attempting to return to normal but is a shadow of what it was. Of the people who are here now, most are too old or too poor to leave. Since June returners have outpaced leavers, according to city officials; most have done so because they have run out of money or are returning to take care of business. But some are trying to rebuild their lives. It is an unbalanced population—children and young people are mostly absent.
There is still a veneer of normality—couples strolling the shady streets here in my suburban neighbourhood of Saltivsky, some shops open and an outdoor market with green grocers, butchers and deli food. Next to them is a second tier of vendors, pensioners squatting on the sidewalk beside modest piles of fruit and vegetables from home gardens, others hawking their own possessions—China, silverware, old clothes. People are having to make do.
★
Our next task with the volunteers is to deliver supplies to a creche across town and then to a hospital. And so we go careening across Kharkiv in a yellow Renault combi van, driving at high speed; not because there is urgency but because that is the way they do things. All the way there is running banter, shouted commands and good natured barbs—what can be expected from team work and familiarity under a bit of pressure.
The volunteers are an exuberant bunch. They may not realise it, but they are beautiful people. There are no claims to sophistication or high level skills here—although two have military service backgrounds—just a practical approach to getting the job done. One worked at an American airline in Florida, another at a bank in Poland, the third as an IT specialist in the UK. All of them took leave of absence from work to be here and one had to go home to earn more money before they could come back again. None draws a salary. For this writer who has experienced bloated aid projects in Africa, there is something refreshing about this. The organisation—if it is one—is flat. It connects local needs with foreign donations and the volunteers are the logistics and the front end management. I have been looking for signs of organised structure to have emerged in Ukraine’s enormous international humanitarian relief effort but there doesn’t seem to be any. For now this massive anarchic structure, staffed by volunteers, works.
It is a hot and humid summer day with thunder clouds in the distance. On the eastern European plains, next to the Russian border, as we are criss-crossing Kharkiv in traffic, music blaring on the radio, it begins to remind me of my own home town in North America—also a continental climate with hot summers. Just a summer day in a hot city. Except there is a war on.