In the evening in Kharkiv, you can see the stars surprisingly well. There is a partial blackout in the city, there are no street lights, and shop neon lights are turned off. Only a few windows in the houses are illuminated in the centre, but now just a small number of people live there. So in mid-autumn, seven o'clock in the evening feels almost like midnight - surprisingly quiet and dark.

The city was calm after the Ukrainian army launched the counteroffensive in early September and almost completely liberated the part of the Kharkiv region occupied by the Russians. The front line moved east, and the Russian shelling decreased. However, in the case of Kharkiv, there will be no peace until the very end of the war: the border with Russia is very close, so the Russian army can shell the city from its own territory, if not with artillery, then with old Soviet S-300 missile systems.

SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE Very few children are left in Kharkiv: school education did not start there, and those people who could, have taken their families to safer regions of Ukraine, where children can study in peace. However, the Art Zone in the city centre is crowded even in the evenings. Entering there from an empty and dark street, it seems that we are entering a different reality - noisy and bright. The Art Zone is located underground, which is why it is popular as a venue for various cultural events. For several days, during which we had the opportunity to observe the life of the city, we watched classes and workshops for children, public discussions and meetings taking place there. The organisation "Fifth Kharkiv", operating under wartime conditions, recently organised there a literary festival of the same name and still regularly organises artistic events (the name of the organisation refers to the words of Yuri Shevelyov, an outstanding Ukrainian linguist from Kharkiv, who argued that in the past Kharkiv was undergoing through three phases of its existence, today it is the fourth, and the fifth was his dream of a city in independent Ukraine).

After the evening discussion, people go out of the basement into the dark streets and, illuminating the way with flashlights, go in different directions to return home before the curfew. Visitors can stay at the hotel in the basement. This is a new option that became popular during the war. Previously, such windowless rooms were considered one of the worst and most inconvenient accommodation alternatives. The opposite is true now: you can sleep all night knowing that you are safe because your room is also an air-raid shelter.

The city comes to life when the sun rises: cafes and shops are open until around seven in the evening, the subway starts to run, and teenagers on skateboards appear in the square in the centre. Nearby there is the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, one of Kharkiv's landmarks, which the Russians shelled at the beginning of the war. The people hiding inside from the Russian shelling were uninjured; Only the church's windows and stained glass windows were damaged.

This is not the only such building in the centre of the town: you can often see broken windows, damaged ceilings, and shrapnel marks on the walls, especially near the city council building where a Russian rocket landed in early March - you can clearly notice how the wave of the explosion spread around. The nearby two-story Adidas store was completely destroyed. The floor is still covered with a thick layer of stone and glass, and here and there, saved mirrors that were lucky enough to be on the opposite side of the street, sheltered by wide columns. Between them are visible fragments of clothes and pieces of mannequins, which in this surreal setting look especially bizarre, as if they were also injured. Their amputated arms and legs are lying scattered around. They were injured just like the whole house in which the shop was located - an inscription on the outer wall has been preserved that it is an architectural monument.

However, even this damage cannot be compared to some of the city's sleeping quarters, such as Northern Saltivka, which has come under the most intense fire and now it is practically impossible to reside there. The situation is similar in some other towns of the region.

Izium. The city of crosses

About four weeks have passed since the territory was liberated from Russian occupation. On the road from Kharkiv to Izium, we pass workers who are painting new road markings on the highway. The city already has electricity, and there is a post office (among the Ukrainians, there are even jokes circulating about the speed of restoring social services: after the liberation, there was some rivalry between the state-owned company “Ukrposhta” and the private "Nova Poshta", because each of them wanted to be first).

Nevertheless, not everything can be restored so quickly. Probably, there will be no heating here in the winter because the Russians destroyed the boiler room. There are many abandoned animals in the city - they are hungry and often wounded or injured. Izium has been occupied for six months and now is slowly coming back to life; however, one must be careful when talking about such a "return", knowing how many people lost their lives here. It was in the forest of Izium that a mass burial was found, the photos of which were widely presented in the world media in September.

Now when the exhumation is complete, this pine forest is very quiet and empty. Not only because there are no people here but also because of the neat rows of empty graves from which the bodies of the dead were carried out - all of them were transported to Kharkiv for the expertise and DNA testing - and only then will they be reburied again. In total, 447 bodies of civilians and soldiers were found here. Many of these people were killed by the Russian gunfire, but some were tortured by Russians to death. Nearby, on the verge of the forest, there were Russian military trenches, pits for equipment, and here and there were leftovers of the military food rations called “Fraternity of peoples” (produced by the Meat Factory “Druzhba Narodov” which is “Fraternity of peoples” located in Crimea - editor's note).

There are wooden crosses next to the empty tombs: some with the names and surnames of the deceased, some with the numbers, some with an approximate description of the person, e.g. "Lenin's Prospect 35/5. Grandpa". In separate graves, people were buried in coffins; for example, this was the case of the 20-years-old Daniel, who - according to the description on the tablet on the cross - died on May 4. On the same day as my friend and colleague, journalist Oleksandr Machow, who - together with his unit - defended Ukraine on the way towards Izium.

Mrs Tamara, an employee of the local funeral house, which buried people in this forest during the occupation, says that if the deceased's relatives had money, they would order a coffin and a plaque with the details of the deceased on the cross. In most cases though, the dead people were found in the streets or they were handed over by the Russian troops who ordered to bury them. In such cases, the office hid the bodies for free: the workers dug the grave and put up a wooden cross with a number. Mrs Tamara wrote down the numbers and personal details of the deceased by hand in her notebook - thanks to this, it is now possible to identify the buried victims. This particular pine forest was chosen for its sandy soil. There were many dead, and if it hadn’t been for this land where graves could be dug quickly, they simply wouldn't have had time to bury them at all.

At the number 319 in this notebook, there is Volodymyr Vakulenko - a writer and author of thirteen books - who lived in the village of Kapitolivka near Izium. Currently, no one knows for sure whether he was actually killed and buried in the forest or whether he is in captivity and another person was accidentally buried under his name. The Russians kidnapped Volodymyr at the beginning of the occupation, at the end of March. He was definitely pro-Ukrainian and was considered a significant figure in the entire region. Relatives claim that he did not leave because he thought the Russians would not hurt him - he lived with his son suffering from autism, who does not speak and needs constant care. But Volodymyr was taken away. His son was taken in by Vakulenko's mother and her husband. The family has not heard any news about Volodymyr since then, but does not lose hope that he is alive after all. The body buried under the cross number 319 is currently in the Kharkiv morgue. It needs to be identified. In his own orchard, Volodymyr managed to bury the diary that he kept during the occupation. After the liberation of the Kharkiv region, his notes were recovered and transferred to the Kharkiv Literary Museum.

Bezruki. Alla was washing off the blood of her daughter and granddaughter

The north of the Kharkiv region was not occupied, and these words automatically raise the opinion that the situation in this area must be better. However, this does not mean that life here is back to normal. There is still no electricity in some places - the transmission network has been damaged by shelling. In the village of Bezruki, 17 km from the border with Russia, there is no local school, because almost all the teachers have left. It was here where the eight-years-old Marharyta studied. In this village, almost everyone who asks about it knows this story. The girl was killed by the Russian shelling in June, in the backyard of her own home. Her grandmother, Mrs Alla – living on the neighbouring street - constantly repeats that Marharyta, her older brother and sister always hid in the basement in times of danger. But on the day of her death, it was very quiet from the early morning, and no one really expected the shelling.

Two families lived in the house - the daughters of Mrs Alla, one with her husband and daughter Marharyta, the other with two children. The girl's mother was home that June day; she was washing the dishes and it saved her life. Marharyta and her aunt Julia were in the yard: the woman was hanging laundry, and the girl was reading a book. Marharyta's mother called her to come and read in the kitchen, but eventually she replied that she would wait for her on the porch. When the shooting suddenly started, Julia and Marharyta tried to hide inside. The girl managed to run a few steps, but when she was just at the door, bullets hit her in the head and lungs - she died on the spot. Her aunt was seriously injured and died after a week in a hospital in Kharkiv. At first, she was in a coma, then briefly regained consciousness; Mrs Alla remembers that Julia kept asking "how is Marharyta" and she died unaware that her niece was already dead. Marharyta was born in 2014, when Russia launched its aggression against Ukraine, and she died in 2022, during another Russian aggression. A few days before her death, she was eight years old.

Marharyta’s grandmother is crying, standing next to this porch - she had to wash off the blood of her daughter and granddaughter herself. All the girl's belongings have been preserved in the house - toys, books and school reports on the walls. Now the house is empty, the rest of the family have left Bezruki, and only Mrs Alla and her husband have stayed here. He has a small black kitten running around the house - it was Marharyta's favourite. When Mrs Alla's cat had little kittens, the girl chose one for herself and named it Mishka. She waited a long time for the cat to grow up to take him home. Now the kitten is grown up, but there is no one who would like to take it.


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According to the official data, by October 20, the Armed Forces of Ukraine had liberated 544 towns in the Kharkiv region. Thirty-two localities remain under Russian occupation.

- Olga Rusina
- translated by Katarzyna Chocian

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists

The author is the Ukrainian journalist and translator. Author of books for children and teenagers. Works as an editor of Hromadske Radio in Kyiv.