The mayor of Kharkiv has dismissed Russia’s claim that Monday’s attack on the Kerch Bridge linking the Crimean peninsula to Russia was an act of Ukrainian “terrorism” and said the Kremlin had brought death and destruction to his city on an epic scale.
In an interview with the Guardian, Ihor Terekhov said Moscow had been bombarding Kharkiv’s civilian population since last year’s full-scale invasion. On Sunday, one person was killed and seven injured in three separate attacks, with S-300 missiles fired from across the Russian border.
“How can they speak about terrorism after unleashing war on Ukraine? They are shooting and killing our people. They have destroyed thousands of buildings in Kharkiv, leaving 150,000 homeless,” he said.
He added: “Half of our schools and kindergartens have been wrecked, not to mention our cultural heritage. Our children can’t go to school. This weekend, the Russians attacked us again. They strike our parks and gardens. How dare they speak of terrorism?”
Terekhov said Russia’s army tortured and shot “thousands of people” living in the Kharkiv region, which was occupied for six months. He cited the city of Izium, where the bodies of 447 men, women and children were discovered in a mass grave, including the bodies of 22 Ukrainian soldiers.
The mayor suggested the bridge between Russia and the occupied Crimean peninsula was a legitimate military target. “This will cause a lot of logistical problems for Russia,” he observed. “It shows the Kremlin is weak. The task of Ukraine and its allies is to make Moscow even weaker.”
When Russian tanks tried to seize Kharkiv last March, most citizens fled, with only 300,000 remaining from a population of 2 million, he said. “Sometimes I would drive around and I didn’t see anybody on the streets,” he recalled. Local people returned in several waves after Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive last September.
Kharkiv’s population had gone back up to 1.2 million, he said, after many families returned this summer. He described the city as “indomitable”. But he stressed the situation was far from normal, with frequent air raid sirens, and the threat of bombs and explosions hanging over daily life.
“They are trying to break us, to break Ukraine’s spirit. They will not succeed,” he said.
Terekhov spoke after one of the biggest Russian attacks on Kharkiv for several weeks on Sunday. Air raid alarms sounded across the city for much of the day, with a strike at 2am, followed by another in the evening, and a third on Sunday night. All involved S-300 anti-aircraft missiles.
The regional governor, Oleh Synyehubov, said a young man was killed in the second attack. Vapour trails were visible above Kharkiv’s Freedom Square and the neoclassical regional administration building, which was bombed in the first days of the invasion.
Synyehubov said the victim on Sunday was a man born in 1999 who worked in a civilian enterprise. Three people were hospitalised with shrapnel injuries after the strike in the Osnovianskyi district of the city. A fourth was treated at the scene.
Ukraine recaptured much of the wider Kharkiv region in September, with Russian forces occupying now only a small strip of land there.
The deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said on Telegram that Russian forces had also been attacking in the direction of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region for two days.
“We are on the defensive,” Maliar wrote. “There are fierce battles. The positions of both sides change dynamically several times a day.”
Maliar also said the two armies were pummelling one another around the ruined city of Bakhmut, but that Ukrainian forces were “gradually moving forward” along its southern flank.
She added that Kyiv’s troops were also fending off Russian attacks elsewhere on the eastern front near Avdiivka and Maryinka.
