7.15am: At the Barabashovo market, hit by a drone
The projectile crashed into the huge wholesale market, Ukraine’s biggest and one of Europe’s largest, in the dead of the night, February 5-6, 2025. Municipal workers have started clearing the area of the market shattered by the explosion, while traders try to salvage any goods and equipment that can be saved.
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The Iranian-made Shahed 131 drone that crashed here a few hours ago destroyed around 200 commercial pavilions, says Barabashovo market press official Olena Klymenko. “No one was injured in the strike. There were no buyers or sellers, because it was night, but the infrastructure is badly damaged,” she notes.
Klymenko relays details of the overnight strike, provided by the prosecutor’s office, to a group of journalists gathered at the site with precision and clarity. Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region has been hit by more than 20,000 strikes of all kinds since the February 24, 2022, start of the full-scale Russian invasion.
“On March 22, 2022, a bombardment caused a large-scale fire. Around 20% of the market burned down,” she explains amidst the shards of glass and tangled metal structures.
On this cold February morning, there’s no sign of panic. The buses and metro serving this market on the outskirts of Kharkiv are operating normally. Everyone goes about their business. Shopkeepers are wondering whether they will be able to find other sites in this sprawling market, with an area of nearly 100 hectares. Located less than 40 kilometres from the Russian border, the Barabashovo market served as one of Russia’s main suppliers until 2014.
8.30am: Classes start in the Novobavarsky district
In the pale morning light, children hold hands as they make their way to school. Then, in single-file, they take off their shoes and descend the stairs to reach their classrooms… located 10 metres underground.
Opened in January, this is the second underground school built in Kharkiv to give children and teachers a break from the isolation of online classes in complete safety. It can accommodate 800 pupils a day from four local schools for three half-days a week.
In addition to its 1,200 square metres, 17 classrooms, WiFi service and the presence of a security guard and a nurse, the school is also equipped with a heavy armoured door and a ventilation system to withstand a bombardment or a bacteriological, chemical or nuclear attack.
“When the war started, we realised that children couldn’t study in schools. So, the mayor of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, took the initiative to organise classes outside schools. At first, they were held in the metro. About a year-and-a-half ago, the decision was taken to build schools underground,” explains Svitlichna Olena.
The head of the district’s education department adds that six other underground schools and a hospital are currently under construction, thanks in part to foreign funding. A donation from Taiwan helped build this school.
Cheerful, waving and smiling at everyone, the head teacher can’t stop talking about the benefits of returning to the classroom, even if it’s 10 metres underground.
Larissa, the literature teacher, is also delighted to be back with her pupils. “We haven’t seen them since the war started three years ago. It’s a huge change,” she says. The 22-year-old teacher may be buoyant but she’s not one to gloss over the difficulties her young students are facing. “Many are suffering because their parents are fighting. Some have lost their parents. Every morning, we observe a minute’s silence. We honour the memory of our heroes and remind ourselves that we are in a state of war,” she explains.
Sabina and her friend share the enthusiasm of the teachers and staff. “School is better with friends, and it gets you out of the house,” the schoolgirls explain. “It’s unusual [to be underground], but it’s really great to be back with my classmates. It’s cool!” says Alicia, 11.
“I feel safe, because I know there are a lot of people here, there are teachers, there are guards…It’s not normal but we have no choice,” adds Sabina, who maintains Kharkiv is “the best city in the world”.
The absence of an outdoor recreation space means the 10am snack is quickly gulped down inside the classrooms. But it doesn’t seem to dampen the general good mood. “You know, we Kharkivites are special. Kharkiv is made of reinforced concrete, Kharkiv is unbreakable,” explains a municipal official. “We have not been defeated, we don’t know what to expect from a neighbour like Russia, we don’t know if there will be negotiations to regain peace. But we ensure the protection of our children,” she says.
11:30am: At the Memorial to the Fallen in Kharkiv’s main square
The resilience, determination and calm of the people of Kharkiv are impressive. But the frontline, and its trail of suffering, is not far away, just 35 kilometres from the city centre. It’s also on everyone’s mind. In just three years, the war has plunged many families into mourning.
Yulia Datsko, the headmistress of a local school, is one of Kharkiv’s many grieving residents. These days, she often goes to the Kharkiv oblast regional administration building, which was partially destroyed by a Russian missile in March 2022, in the early days of the war.
She points to a small blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag bearing her husband’s name, Volodymyr. He was killed in action in the Donbas in October 2024. A reserve officer, he had volunteered in the early days of Russia’s attempted full-scale invasion.
Initially an ordinary combatant, he was later reinstated to the rank of major. He led a logistics and support group in Yasna Poliana, a village between Donetsk and Pokrovsk, just before it fell to Russian troops. His body remained on the battlefield, but his comrades sent photos of his lifeless body to his widow.
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“My husband has no grave. Yasna Poliana is now in occupied territory. It’s very important to have such a place to honour his memory. Unfortunately, many families have not been able to find the remains of their loved ones and bury them properly,” says the grieving widow, holding a photograph of her husband on the frontline.
Her boys, aged 14 and 20, come here regularly to pay their respects. The eldest is studying medicine and works as an ambulance driver with the city’s emergency services. The family is immersed in the daily grind of war.
“Without my work, I would have gone mad. I had a beautiful relationship with my husband. This loss was very painful for me, and it will be for the rest of my life. That’s why work saved me psychologically. At school, I can help people – children and parents alike. When you help others, it’s easier to overcome your own grief,” she explains.
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“Like probably all Ukrainians, I’m waiting for the war to end, for peace to return so that my children can live, develop the country and work. I want this nightmare to end, I want my son to become a doctor. A peaceful doctor who helps people, as his father would have wanted,” adds Yulia.
2.45pm: A young paramedic haunted by a pre-teen war victim
Yulia’s son didn’t want to talk to us. But one of his med school classmates, Denys, a shy 21-year-old, agreed to take us to the site of a Russian strike that shook him, leaving him emotionally bruised. On October 31, 2024, Denys, a medical student and ambulance driver, received a call to head to a 10-story residential building that was struck after a Russian plane dropped a guided bomb.
When he got there, “it was horror, panic, I still have flashbacks. The emergency services were clearing away the rubble and looking for victims in the lower part of the building, which had collapsed. They brought us a child they had pulled out. He was in a very serious condition. We took care of him immediately but he didn’t survive. He was 12-years-old”.
Denys has been working as an ambulance driver for the past 18 months. He wants to do everything he possibly can to help the people of his city. “The war isn’t up to us but people have to be ready to help others. You have to keep a cool head to be able to help. I don’t know what more to say… I’m amazed by people’s courage.”
His superior, Ruslan, notes that the work of rescue teams has changed profoundly with the war. “The Russian Federation is 40 kilometres away, so interventions can be very risky. But they haven’t managed to defeat us. I think the people who wanted to leave have already left, and for those who stayed, there’s nothing left to surprise them.”
Before the war, Kharkiv had a population of two million. Today, 1.2 million remain, including 200,000 displaced people, according to the mayor’s office.
5pm: French opera in ‘The Bunker’
In Kharkiv, leisure activities are rare. As soon as night falls, the streets empty out. Restaurants that are open for dinner are never full. Curfew comes into force at 11pm, plunging the city into a thick blanket of silence until 6am. To overcome the anguish, sadness and isolation, the Kharkiv National Opera resumed performances in the summer of 2024.
Today, a recital of classical French opera arias is scheduled for 5pm in “The Bunker”, a 400-seat hall in the basement of the imposing Brutalist building.
In the large hall, where performances are now banned for security reasons, the director believes that the resumption of cultural activity is not only vital for the morale of the city’s residents but also a patriotic duty. “It’s propaganda in the good sense of the term. We are a state, and we must promote Ukrainian national culture,” says Ihor Touluzov.
Tonight, audiences of all ages flock to listen to an hour-and-a-half of arias from Georges Bizet’s “Carmen” and other lyrical works by 19th century French composers. The harshness of life on the surface is replaced by a carefree lightness in a cocooned comfort zone.
Before the performance, Yulia Antonova, one of the soloists, confides that these miniature performances, constrained by the size of the stage, available equipment and truncated schedule, are “very important to me and to the audience. At my first show here [in “The Bunker”], I got up on stage and saw people crying. They applauded me and said, ‘You’re our oxygen’”.
At the end of the performance, to thunderous applause and a standing ovation, an emotional woman in the audience says it’s the first time she’d been back to the opera since the start of the war. “Creativity, art, music… It really inspires and allows you to relax a little, to forget the war, if only for a moment. Tonight, I feel like a normal person again.”
Another audience member adds that, “it’s now the norm [to be in a bunker]. We’re very grateful to the artists for giving us the opportunity to see this show”.
8pm: A family dinner, because ‘it’s better to be together than scattered’
Not far from the underground school, Sabina’s family is preparing dinner. Their Soviet era apartment is equipped with modern comforts. Her parents, Marina, a beautician, and Elnour, a shopkeeper, talk at length about their wanderings during the first months of the war.
In February 2022, they fled as fighting raged and shells rained down on the city. The family headed for western Ukraine, then Poland, Germany and finally France, where they met up with acquaintances, accompanied by their cat and grandmothers.
Three months after arriving in the northern French town of Seine-et-Marne, they took the opposite route, heading 3,000 kilometres to western Ukraine and finally Kharkiv, when Ukraine’s victorious counter-offensive pushed Russian forces out of the region in late 2022.
Marina speaks in Russian, and expresses her fears when the air raid sirens go off at night. “But nobody goes down to the cellar anymore, we’re now used to it,” she says.
“We convinced ourselves that everything will be fine. We wanted to go home anyway. Our children are brave, and so are we. Of course, it’s scary. The explosions are scary. We sit here in the evening, with the Shahed drones flying overhead, and every time we wonder where it’s going to crash,” she recounts.
Elnour Huseinov, Sabina’s father, has heard too many stories of couples separated by war who end up divorced. For him, it’s important to stay at home with his family, whatever the cost. “I can’t live without my family for more than a month,” he confides. At 35, he has no desire to start all over again in a foreign country.
With a mixture of fatalism and resignation, he adds that he believes “this war will end one day, like all wars. It’s been going on for three years now, and we’ve already waited so long: first for the war to end, then the counter-offensive, then there was [President Donald] Trump’s election… and now we’re still waiting. There will be long negotiations. Whatever happens, we’re hopeful. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have come back to live in Kharkiv”.
Kharkiv lives and resists. Ukraine’s scientific, artistic and commercial jewel in the east, this city has nevertheless paid a heavy price. According to official figures, over 38,000 buildings, including 200 schools, have been bombed in the Kharkiv region since February 24, 2024. And 2,897 civilians, including 104 children, have lost their lives.
This article has been translated from the original in French.
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