by Vladimir Volkonsky
[REGNUM] This text is about what the former Russian city of Kharkov has become, how it lives and how a person who has not given up his beliefs lives in it. Its author is just such a person. He did not run away from the city, like many, having gone through the most difficult time with him. He understands that he is taking a terrible risk, including by offering to publish his notes and sketches to IA Regnum . However, it was his conscious decision to talk about what was happening. Because this is the voice of those who are not heard. Who is locked in the prison that the state has turned into, who is under the supervision of voluntary guards who have received power over other people's lives. Those who have not yet lost hope.
July... It's hot... The asphalt is melting underfoot... In the sun, the thermometer has broken through the mark of forty degrees and is climbing higher... In Kharkov, citizens, worn out by the scorching sun, crawl along the streets, and expensive cars with air conditioning rustle along the roads with tires. In cars without air conditioning, drivers and passengers look like boiled crayfish. Fountains have been launched in the parks (at least in the central Shevchenko garden), a dolphinarium is operating, and in the KhPI sports complex, which was bombed last spring, the swimming pool has reopened (by some miracle the missiles did not hit it).
You can only guess that a war is going on a hundred kilometers from here, a real war with a mountain of corpses on both sides of the LBS, only from the air sirens that sound every half hour, and from the windows of houses boarded up with plywood, which residents have either abandoned, having fled to the west, or are in no hurry rebuild in anticipation of a new offensive. No one knows whether it will happen or not, but everyone remembers Putin’s words about the demilitarized “sanitary zone,” some with horror and some with hope for the arrival of the Russian Armed Forces. The latter are a disappearing minority and there are many reasons for this.
Nobody pays attention to air raid alarms anymore, or even reacts, except for banks and some particularly “advanced” ones, such as the telecom operator Vodafone, whose stores, following the instructions of the authorities, close their doors during this time and kick out visitors. Kharkov is a front-line city, there is still a curfew from 23:00 to 05:00 in the morning, and street lighting is only turned on for a couple of hours. Without it, you can’t see anything, it’s pitch black—you could prick your eyes out.
True, cleaning vehicles drive around at night, cleaning and putting the city in order, and they haven’t stopped driving all this time since the beginning of the Northern Military District, for which special thanks to Mayor Terekhov. This is precisely what brought the horror-stricken minds of Kharkov residents to their senses in the first days of the special operation, when the city was subjected to massive shelling. Nowadays, too, arrivals happen almost every day, but Kharkov residents, accustomed to this, are not even interested in where and what was blown up. Who cares…
The city returned to almost peaceful life, there were significantly more people, all previously closed shops, cafes and restaurants were opened. There are significantly fewer military personnel in the city, but raids on potential conscripts in the metro (which has worked and is working completely free all this time) and on the streets continue. The war and military commissars are gathering their harvest, and there are significantly fewer conscript and middle-aged men. In reality, only pioneers and pensioners come across).
No one is buying salt and matches in stores anymore; goods are almost the same as before the war (which cannot be said about prices, which have increased exponentially). At the same time, “Kraken”, the most combat-ready and trained by Western instructors Kharkov unit of “Azov” (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation. - Ed.) also disappeared from the city. Finally, these ideological fascists were sent where they should be - for disposal at the front , where, as they say, their ranks have already been greatly thinned.
The garbage is removed, water and electricity are available, and the dollar exchange rate is amazing in its unshakability. Thus, there seems to be a war, but it is as if it is not there. It’s like I’m watching a bad dream and I just need to wake up. There is news on TV with burning houses, and in our markets there is a brisk trade in cherries and crowds of idle young people, mostly of high school age, who are not yet in danger of being drafted into the army, are wandering around the streets.
Did I think at the beginning of the Northern Military District that a year and a half after it began, I would not know how active hostilities would end, and most importantly, where? Here are my notes from those days (I wrote “on the table”, without any hope of publication).
25 February. I slept for six hours, normal. In the morning, the Su-24 was working, ours (in the Russian sense), it was bombed, or it worked so hard with air-to-surface missiles that my windows almost flew out, then the Ukrainian MLRS went to thresh. They will take the city at night, already now there is no one in the city, all the shops are closed, there is no water anywhere, the garbage has not been taken out for two days - they are waiting for Putin.
February 26, 10:30 am. The air raid alarm had already gone off twice, and the mayor asked residents to leave their homes and take shelter in bomb shelters, basements or the subway. I’m sitting in my “basement” on the 5th floor, waiting for Putin until he comes.
February 26, 23:30. The whole sky over KhTZ is on fire, a video of this glow has already appeared online with the hashtag: “Evening Kharkov”, at one o’clock in the morning the shooting died down. According to personal contacts among the Ukrainian Armed Forces, there is information that the Ukrainian military has been given the command not to resist in order to save their lives. Tonight everything will be decided, in the morning I hope to see the miracles of changing shoes.
But it didn’t happen... Alas and ah! The city was really ready to surrender, the mayor addressed the townspeople on local TV with a call to strengthen themselves and not lose heart, for the first time calling them Kharkovites, not Ukrainians, and said: “We are Kharkovites, God is with us, we must hold on!”
The 92nd Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which defended the city, disappeared somewhere, and when on February 27 the “assault” began, which cannot even be called reconnaissance in force, Kharkov was defended only by the Nazis of the local Freikorps, the special police unit “Kord” and scattered units of the defense forces put together literally the day before.
You know how the “assault” ended. After these events, only one thing is clear: something went wrong with the Russians from the very beginning. They walked as if to a parade, but encountered fierce resistance. About the parade - this is not a speech formula, in reality the equipment came with St. George ribbons on the armor, and on Kholodnaya Gora, falling behind the column, a car with a dress uniform got lost. I don’t know what happened to the driver; respectable citizens could have torn him to pieces.
As a result, the euphoria of the first days of the SVO gave way to surprise and misunderstanding. They were replaced by fear for their fate and dull apathy. A sticky fear crept under the shirts of most recent sympathizers of the Russian Federation and shackled their souls. If before February 24 the number of such people in Kharkov fluctuated from 40 to 60% (in different periods after the Maidan in different ways), then with each new rocket bombing of the city this number melted, until a year and a half later it dropped to a statistical error of 2–3 %.
Perhaps there are more of them, but voicing your position is more expensive for yourself, even at home in the kitchen behind closed windows and doors, not everyone will risk it. Believe me, these are not empty words - here such a twilight of fascism began that Hitler and Goebbels smoke with envy, asking from hell: “But it turns out that this was possible?”
It turns out that it was possible... More from last year’s entries:
Now my life here is not worth a penny. The life of any person here now is not worth a penny. I could get hit by Russian missiles (I have already, I wouldn’t wish the pleasure on anyone). What the arrival of a winged Iskander is like can only be understood by a person who has fallen under it, when a 5-story building rises and falls under you from an explosion some three hundred meters away, and so on twice in a row. The only thing worse than the arrival of the winged “Caliber”, but so far God has been merciful. I might as well end up under Ukrainian Grads. I’ve also been hit before, I survived only by a miracle, when one rocket from the package did not reach my house some 20 meters, pierced the building in front, burning the top floor along with the residents, and the second rocket flew over it 20 meters, from the explosion of which I The ceiling fell right on me and blew out all the windows in the whole house. And this is just "Grad" not even “Hurricane” or “Smerch”. I’m not even talking about artillery and mortars here.
This is my difference with the residents of the LDPR, who tell me that the Donbass endured for 8 years and ordered you to do so. There is no need to compare the ammunition that arrives to us and to the Donbass; even the 152mm cannot be compared with the winged “Caliber”. No Donbass has ever known the intensity of shelling that Kharkov experienced in the first days of the Northern Military District, when a missile raid lasts two hours in a row, from which the earth trembles and a bloody glow blazes throughout the sky, or when an artillery cannonade with 15-minute breaks for lunch lasts the entire day and you just count whether it’s departing or already arriving, distinguishing “Grad” from “Tornado” or “Hurricane” by the sound and praying to God: if only it doesn’t hit you this time.
Half of northern Sal'tovka and Pyatikhatka are now in ruins, and no one is going to restore them. Only a person who finds himself here and now can understand the horror and nightmare of what is happening.
At the same time, I am not afraid of Russian missiles or bombs. They know where they are flying, a plane arrives at night, and in the morning someone does not find either the military registration and enlistment office, or the tank or aviation school, or the regional state administration or the SBU department in their usual places. I’m afraid of the Ukrainian MLRS and heavy artillery, which are making noise like they’ve been blown up all day, and I only hear flights, but their ammunition isn’t flying to Russia, is it? Although, you must admit, getting under friendly fire is much more offensive than being under enemy fire, and living surrounded by enemies who only dream of handing you over to the basement as a hidden quilted jacket.
They could kill me right on the street just because some strange man with a machine gun and a blue bandage pulled over his civilian clothes didn’t like me. Or be bolted to a tree with a sign that says “Marauder.” Or beaten half to death. And if they want to check your phone on the street and it turns out that “there is only a push-button phone,” this is generally a 90 percent chance of being subject to “identification.”
Believe me, all these moral monsters, gopniks, who have received firearms at their disposal, and call themselves fighters of the terrorist defense, are much worse than the fighters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. I have already encountered those, they have no time for you, they are fighting with an external enemy, in principle, people are under oath, I understand them - they are defending their homeland (an ugly homeland, but what it is). They called us up and went to fight. I tried to let one such warrior go ahead in the line at the cash register (although they have the right to go without a line at all), so he refused, saying, I’ll wait.
I can also die in the dungeons of the SBU, where my vigilant neighbors will hand me over as Putin’s spy, who signals to him at night by turning on the light in the kitchen. Just like in the SBU, it is useless to prove that you are not Putin’s spy when your computer is full of compromising evidence about yourself (from a cover of the USSR anthem to the “enemy resources” that you visited in recent months). The funny thing is that you won’t get anything at all for a Nazi military march, as well as for having a swastika all over your back or SS runes.
I no longer condemn my friends who, not only talk about forbidden topics, they are even afraid to think in this direction. And believe me, it’s not evening yet! If Kharkov used to be a Russian city, now there are 95–97% of “mutants” here. And they all fiercely hate Russia and Putin. Explaining to them that everything is to blame for their “president of the world”, who brought the war, is a disastrous endeavor. This is objective reality. And the longer all this continues, the deeper the furrow will be between our once fraternal peoples, who are killing each other to please the overseas puppeteers who are cutting coupons from this.
Personally, I don’t see a way out. Things have gone too far. Maybe you see? Every Ukrainian family already has those killed in this war or acquaintances and friends of those killed. And this is a furrow that has run between us for generations. And I’m still not saying anything about the generation of zombies born in the 2000s, for whom there are no authorities and who perceive history in the form in which it is fed to them by the scoundrels and degenerates who came to power in Ukraine in 2014.
The real twilight of fascism will begin if the Russian Federation stops its Northwestern Military District halfway, limiting itself to already occupied territories for reasons of supreme expediency. Although this will be death not only for me, but also for her, just with a time lag. I hope the Kremlin understands this and will follow through to the end.