The Russian offensive on the Kharkiv region this month has, after 20 months of relative peace, again placed many of the villages where my charity works, repairing homes destroyed by bombs, at the forefront of the war.
I began volunteering in Kharkiv two years ago, having dropped out of my master’s degree in Russian literature and set up the charity to support Ukrainians. After the region’s liberation in September 2022, hundreds of thousands of people had started to return to Kharkiv city and the wider region from other parts of Ukraine, and countries that had taken them in as refugees. The villages where I work were reawakening, the craters that lined the streets had been filled, shops were reopening, electricity was back on. People’s return was mostly driven by a desire to be at home.
“Dim ye dim” is the catchphrase of those living in these villages. Home is home. For many, living in the villages that sit in the 30 miles between Kharkiv and the border with Russia, returning home is also a conscious act of defiance. One elderly woman, who had stayed in her village throughout the war, through occupation and shelling, told me that she would not leave because “so long as there is a Ukrainian on this soil, it will be Ukraine”.
When reports began circulating back in January that Russia may try to take Kharkiv again, local people generally ignored them. Everyone understands the risks they are taking by living so close to the border, but people cannot live in constant fear. Residents planted their vegetable gardens, confident they would be harvesting from them in a few months’ time. They continued to hope that the US military aid package would come through on time, and that the fortifications on the Ukrainian side of the border would hold the Russians back. Nonetheless, over the past month, friends of mine have begun to make contingency plans, posting their documents to family members in safer parts of Ukraine, or moving their children to relatives elsewhere.
On 10 May, the Russians finally recrossed the border and have captured over a dozen villages. Last week, at a petrol station in the eastern Saltivka district of Kharkiv, I stood next to the melted carcass of a lorry hit by a strike in 2022, and listened to the sound of artillery from the frontline, now once again just a few miles away. When I texted a resident of one village last week to ask how she was, she simply replied: “Prokhody is burning.”
Six weeks ago I was having lunch in that same village, which had recently regained electricity for the first time in two years and was discussing plans for local people to put on a cabaret at their small cultural centre over the summer. That cultural centre was badly damaged at the start of the war, but the local administration repaired it in the belief that music might help heal the residents’ trauma. It may well be destroyed now. The village is under too much fire for anyone to check.
On a walk with a local friend in Kharkiv last week, we noted how similar the tense atmosphere was to when we had first met in the city in the summer of 2022. There are some major differences, though. The use now of immensely powerful glide bombs, capable of creating craters as deep as nine-storey buildings, adds another layer of tension.
The lack of faith in the west’s support is another. In the early days of the war, despite all the unfurling horrors, people were confident that the west saw this fight as its fight too, and that Ukraine would receive the support it needed. The massive delays in US aid mean that this belief has been replaced by a feeling of betrayal. Ukrainians breathed a collective sigh of relief last month, when the US Congress finally passed the long-awaited bill providing $60.84bn of military aid to Ukraine. However, I don’t know a single person who has not lost a loved one fighting in the past six months, and no one here can shake the belief that those lives might have been saved had the US passed the bill sooner.
The Ukrainian army seems to have stalled the Russian advance on Kharkiv for now, but concrete action must be taken by Ukraine’s allies to ensure that Kharkiv and the villages around it do not become the next Mariupol. Kharkiv needs proper air defence: entering the city feels as though an umbrella has been taken off you during a storm –people are living with little protection from the attacks launched from across the border every day. Most vitally, Ukrainian troops must be able to strike in Russian territory: once they can do this, they will be able to destroy the systems from which these weapons are launched. So far, the UK and Latvia have said this should be allowed, and those countries must now step up the pressure on the US to allow Ukraine to do the same with American weapons.
Prior to moving to Kharkiv, I spent the first months of the war volunteering on the Polish-Ukrainian border, helping those fleeing. I thought at the time that there was nothing more heartbreaking than the look in the eyes of a person who has been forced to leave their home. Since this new offensive, I have realised that there is: the look in the eyes of a person who fled their home, returned thinking they were safe once more and started to rebuild their life, only to be forced to flee again. My friends and colleagues are once again being forced to make the impossible decision of whether to leave their homes and step back into the life of a refugee, or to stay in their beloved Kharkiv and risk death every day.
This situation was avoidable. The civilians and soldiers who have died since the new offensive began can’t be brought back, but through adequate weapons and air defence provisions, and permission for Ukraine to strike Russian territory, the west can ensure that their friends and families won’t face the same fate – and that the residents of Kharkiv and the villages where I work can keep rebuilding their homes and their lives.
Ada Wordsworth is the co-founder of KHARPP, a grassroots project repairing homes in eastern Ukraine
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
