KHARKIV, Ukraine — At some point, all shelling sites look the same. There’s the jagged-edge crater with a spray-pattern of divots gouged out by shrapnel; the gap-toothed hole where ordnance punched through a wall; the scorched remains of automobiles that happened to be passing when a missile slammed into the road. You notice the dazed pedestrians, who barely believe they’re alive, looking at the corpses of the not-so-lucky, the blood pooling around them.
From the very first moments of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kharkiv has been a target, its name almost at the top of the list of cities wronged in this war. Every day brings a fresh pummeling, more names and addresses in the growing litany of casualties and destruction. So far, more than 530 civilians have been killed and many more wounded, according to the United Nations. The municipality says some 2,100 buildings have been damaged.
But those terrible zoomed-out figures obscure a surprising close-up reality: namely, that the violence in this northeastern city is mostly localized, with some of the heaviest bombardments in Europe since World War II hitting one part of Kharkiv, a district called Saltivka, while just a few miles up the road people are out walking their dogs, lounging in the park or shopping.
