Russian attacks have destroyed all three major power stations, but residents continue to live and work with only a few, often unpredictable, hours of electricity each day. More than 100 schools have been damaged or destroyed but classes go on, deep underground in subway stations. Dozens of fire and paramedic stations have been blown up, putting first responders in daily jeopardy but failing to deter them from their jobs.
“When a rocket hits, within three to four hours, all the glass is cleaned up, all the central roads are cleared,” said Andrii Dronov, the 39-year-old deputy chief of the Kharkiv Fire Department. “By morning, it looks like nothing happened and there were no explosions.”
As the attacks intensify, though, there are real questions about how much longer Kharkiv, 25 miles from the Russian border, can hold on without more robust air defenses. Since March, Russia has been bombarding it for the first time with one of the deadliest weapons in its arsenal: powerful guided bombs known as glide bombs, dropped from warplanes, that deliver hundreds of pounds of explosives in a single blast.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The espresso machine was warming up and Liliia Korneva was counting cash at the coffee shop in Kharkiv where she works when a powerful Russian bomb detonated nearby, sending up a deafening explosion and knocking her to the floor.
“When a rocket hits, within three to four hours, all the glass is cleaned up, all the central roads are cleared,” said Andrii Dronov, the 39-year-old deputy chief of the Kharkiv Fire Department.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, last week became the highest ranking Kremlin official to signal that Moscow has designs on seizing Kharkiv, saying it “plays an important role” in President Vladimir V. Putin’s stated desire to create a “sanitary zone” along the Russian border.
The crater in the courtyard outside Ms. Korneva’s coffee shop, for instance, has been filled, shattered windows boarded up, splintered trees cut down and a playground repaired.
Last week, New York Times journalists traveled around the city with paramedics and firefighters, observing daily life and talking to residents and local officials.
Dina Chmuzh, a local artist, paints the words of Ukrainian poets past and present on the wooden boards that now cover so many blasted out windows.
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