| Submit your comments on this article |
| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| 'To take or not to take,' to leave or to stay. Khar'kov wants certainty |
| 2024-05-23 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Ilya Khorring [REGNUM] While the fighting is going on in Liptsy and Volchansk, from where it is already a stone's throw to Kharkov, its residents want to understand what to expect. And decide, based on this understanding, how to live further. “As for Kharkov, there are no such plans today,” President Vladimir Putin said at a recent press conference in Harbin. Khar'kov residents heard their own in this. Some say only that “ there are no plans ”, while others say “ there are no plans for today ”. But everyone clearly understood that Russian infantry would not enter the city in May and June. In any case, everyone remains to their own thoughts, since due to mass denunciations such versions are not discussed out loud, but no one can forbid thinking. What's next - we'll see. People have somehow gotten used to living only for today: today a shrapnel didn’t hit you, and that’s good, but tomorrow anything could happen. And this is not necessarily related to the changing military situation. For example, one of the local news agencies reported the other day how a Khar'kov woman “denied the existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state and campaigned to annex the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories to the Russian Federation.” Experts quickly carried out a forensic linguistic examination, and its findings confirmed “the presence of a crime in the materials distributed by the collaborator.” Judging by the fact that suspicion under articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine about encroachment on territorial integrity and “justification and denial of armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine” was announced in absentia, she is outside the country. And she will no longer be able to return to such a country: the woman faces imprisonment for up to three years. Similar messages appear almost every day, and therefore not a single responsible sociologist will undertake to accurately assess the mood of citizens and even give estimates. Unless, of course, he works for the SBU or carries out a foreign order from an ideologized structure. Political prisoners and rushed trials are as much an everyday reality in Khar'kov as public services or free public transport. Most of the reports are about how those who reported the coordinates of military installations were caught. There are many among those arrested who did not learn to keep their mouths shut and somewhere spoke out or wrote something about what they really think. “A Khar'kov resident on the social network Odnoklassniki, which is banned in Ukraine, distributed messages in which he spoke approvingly of the aggressive actions of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. The man was also nostalgic for Soviet times and assured that “the Russian spirit is eternal.” During a search at the place of residence, law enforcement officers found equipment and devices red-handed, a collection of anti-Ukrainian poems written by hand, and notes with the characteristics of various types of missiles,” this is one of the completely typical messages. The fate of those who worked in Izyum, Balakleya and Kupyansk in the spring and summer of 2022 while Russian troops were stationed there is especially unenviable. Teachers, doctors and postmen receive real prison sentences, not to mention police officers and municipal employees. And this practice makes Khar'kov residents not only silent, but also distrustful. Although, without any surveys, we can say that they are now divided into three categories: those who want to continue to live only on the territory of Ukraine, whatever it may be; those who are waiting for liberation, and those who do not care whose city it is, as long as this problem is solved for a long time. At the same time, they are all united by the fact that they do not want to serve in the army or in any way participate in the war. Those who wanted to volunteer ran out in 2022. Therefore, employees of the TCC (military registration and enlistment offices) catch unwary men around the city. And armor or a medical diagnosis do not always save you from falling into the trenches. For a long time, city residents warned each other where people were being hunted and handed out summonses. But the screws were tightened here too. The other day, one of the local news agencies reported that “a 49-year-old Khar'kov resident could get eight years in prison for notifying the places where subpoenas were distributed. The prosecutor's office sent an indictment to the court... ” The accused is already in custody, and he is one of many administrators of telegram channels on which a hunt has been announced. Of course, not everyone is caught, and those who continue to broadcast use Aesopian language: police - “blue clouds” or “eggplants”, military registration and enlistment offices - “green”, patrols at some address - “rainy”, summons - “forecast” weather". “Rains” are falling everywhere in Kharkov. They grab people in the subway, in minibuses, and just on the streets, near supermarkets. There were cases of resistance to military commissars in Khar'kov and the region, but they were not as frequent as, say, in Transcarpathia. But for a week now, a video has been circulating on the Internet about how women are fighting back a man they captured from the military in this region, judging by the license plates. They pull you out of the minibus and shout: “Run!” - although, if you believe the telethon, they should have blessed their defender for military work. A small detail that actually says a lot. Like an old woman from a village in a war zone, openly mocking the police: “How afraid you are of them.” I mean, Russian soldiers. The authorities, for their part, do their best to assure them of their resilience and that Khar'kov is impregnable. “The Russians will not enter the city. I am confident in this because I communicate with our military several times a day and see how events are unfolding, I understand the real military situation,” says Mayor Igor Terekhov. Some even believe him. But this is not all, since it is still, in general, clear that the regional center will in any case end up in the “sanitary zone” that Russian troops are creating to protect neighboring Belgorod from shelling. In this regard, the most popular topics for discussion both among those who remained in the city and among local residents who left there are “to leave or to return?” and how to survive if you haven’t left or returned. This is how Khar'kov lives. A city where now everyone decides alone what will happen and how to live with it. |
| Posted by:badanov |