18
WORLD NEWS
From the gloom of the underground
train, a little girl in a pink sparkly jumper,
a yellow bow in her hair, peeps out
through the doors. Her name is Veronika
and she is seven. “I like living on the
train,” she says. Then she adds uncer-
tainly, “but not very much.”
Spending night and day in a train car-
riage might sound like an adventure to
some children but after 65 days, the
attraction is wearing off for Veronika.
Getting there meant fleeing the bombing
of her home and leaving behind toys,
friends and a pet cat called Boniface. And
every so often the carriage rocks, because
of explosions devastating the city above.
Veronika is one of thousands of mostly
women and children living in 30 under-
ground stations across Kharkiv, Ukraine’s
second biggest city, as it is pounded
relentlessly by Russian forces. A quarter
of its residential buildings have been
wiped out and hundreds killed.
She and her mother Natasha, who nor-
mally works in a pet shop, live in Heroiv
Pratsi metro station, just a few miles from
Two months hiding underground
and too scared to take a bus to safety
the front line and a few minutes from the
northern suburb of Saltivka where
smouldering ruins and blackened build-
ings recall scenes of the Blitz. Her father
is still in the basement of their block of
flats with the cat.
“There’s no place to go — it’s here or
the bombs,” shrugs Natasha, 36, turning
on a pocket light as Veronika snuggles up
with a teddy on the seat. “I know it’s not
normal but I try to keep her usual bed-
times and make it as normal as possible.”
To leave life above, walking through
the shattered glass of blown-up shops
and down the steps to the brown granite
walls and geometric chandeliers of the
Soviet-built station, is to enter a dysto-
pian world. Stretched out around the
ticket barriers, then down the steps to the
platforms and all along them, are people
lying on blankets, a few lucky ones with
air mattresses, some using cardboard
boxes as tables.
At one point there were 2,500 people
living here. Most have left but around
800 remain, many with their cats, a few
with dogs, and one with a cage of colour-
ful budgerigars. The artificial light is glar-
ing and the air stale. There is an endless
soundtrack of coughing. Nests of wires
spring from electricity sockets, powering
up phones and boiling kettles.
A young boy is riding up and down on a
scooter. One woman is doing leg-bicy-
cles. Another boy in a red-striped hoodie
walks back and forth, eyes empty. On asunny day some venture outside, to buy
food or even head to their old homes for a
shower if they still have water. Many,
however, have never left and insist they
will stay there until peace comes.
“There’s no way I am going above
ground until this war is over,” says Alina,
32, who lives at the top of steps, under
adverts for Scotch & Soda clothing, with
her husband Aleksandr, 31, and their
large grey cat Stepan. They moved there
on February 27, along with Alina’s
mother, after their home was shelled.
The station was so full they had to
sleep on the steps but as people left they
were able to move up to the entry hall.
“It’s uncomfortable but better than being
killed,” shrugged Aleksandr, an electri-
cian. Like everyone there, Aleksandr and
Alina spend their days trawling social
media on their phones and playing with
the cat. The lights never go off and many
lose sense of night and day.
Volunteers bring daily hot meals and
donated clothes for there is nowhere to
do washing. Pastor Fyodyr Hyrtsink visits
every two days with his wife Anatolina
and a few helpers, trying to persuade
those with children to come out and
board a bus west. “Lots of people are
super-afraid of being outside and super-
depressed,” he said. “I tell them 25 buses
have already safely left, taking people,
but they think they will be killed instantly
if they leave.”
News spread quickly when one familyBombed from their homes, 800 people, mostly women and children, sleep on rail platforms, to a soundtrack of shelling
left for Kramatorsk after six weeks in the
station only to be killed by a missile as
they were waiting to board a train.
Driving around the city’s deserted
streets, it’s not hard to understand what
sent people underground. Aside from
Mariupol in the south, no Ukrainian city
has undergone such relentless bombard-
ment, even though at just 20 miles from
the Russian border, almost all of its resi-
dents are Russian-speakers and many
have relations in Russia.
Though Kharkiv pushed out Russian
forces and continues to hold off the
advance, the cost has been enormous.
“There hasn’t been a day of this war
when we haven’t been shelled,” says Ihor
Terekhov, the city’s mayor. Out of 8,
high-rise apartment buildings, 2,
have been destroyed, he says. The
library, art museum and cathedral have
been hit as well as half the schools, a kin-
dergarten and water pumps.
Many of those remaining in the base-
ments of blackened buildings have no
water or electricity and have to risk going
outside to cook on open fires.
“People have moved into the metro
because it’s the safest place,” said the
mayor. At the peak, he says, more than
100,000 were in underground stations.
But life there is grim. In Heroiv Pratsi
station there are just seven toilets — four
male urinals, three for women, and only
basins for washing. Sometimes people
walk through the tunnel to the next sta-tion which has a shower, but there are
long waits.
Yet a strange kind of community has
developed. “Our life values have com-
pletely changed being here,” says Alina.
“Before we were obsessed with work and
buying stuff but now I realise material
things don’t matter. Look, even the ani-
mals are friends,” she says as a cat and
dog rub noses.
Lots of people have jars of red tulips.
They were handed out by Katya Talpa,
35, who used to manage a call centre. Her
husband, Yuri, is a barber and often
shaves the other men. It is forbidden for
men aged 18 to 60 to leave the country.
Like many younger women, Katya has
stayed too. She plays with her two cats as
she explains, “My husband can’t leave
the country so I stay with him.”
As she talks, Yuri is cracking jokes and
chopping potatoes and carrots for a stew
in a slow-cooker he recently bought.
The couple are determined to keep
cheerful. Katya holds up a mirror to
brush her hair and keeps a bottle of per-
fume on a small table by the pillar where
their blankets are spread.
But she admits: “Life here is a 20-min-
ute wait to use the toilet, then 20 minutes
to wash your face, then 20 minutes to
plug in your kettle, then 40 minutes
queueing for food from volunteers. The
rest of the time we are on our phones or
playing with cats.”
An old man called Ivan plays mournfulCHRISTINA
LAMB
Kharkiv
KHARKIV
Airport4 milesHeroiv Pratsi
undergroundKharkivRussian
controlled
Recent
fightingSource:
Institute for
the Study of War and AEI’s
Critical Threats
Project, LivemapsMomotoveOn Putin’s
‘zombie box’
tune into 16
hours a day
of invasion
propaganda
advice to heart more than
Simonyan. She was
appointed editor-in-chief of
RT in 2005 at just 25. In its
early years, the channel
attracted little international
attention, and overt
propaganda was relatively
rare. All that changed in
2008, after Russia’s brief war
with neighbouring Georgia,
when RT was handed a key
role in what the Kremlin callsDmitry Kiselyov, 68, the
Kremlin’s chief propagandist
and host of an influential
Sunday night current-affairs
show. He once proudly
informed viewers that Russia
was the only country that
could reduce America to
“radioactive ash” and in 2013
told staff: “The period of
impartial journalism is over:
objectivity is a myth”.
No one has taken thattelevision stations have been
purged of almost all
entertainment shows. From
9am to 3am on Channel One,
the flagship TV station,
viewers are bombarded with
16 hours of news, exposés of
western “fakes” about
Russia’s invasion, and
political talk shows featuring
Kremlin-friendly pundits.
The only let-up is for a short
programme on health issues
and a drama series about the
creation of the atomic bomb.
It’s a similar picture on
Rossiya 1, the other main
state TV channel.
Dubbed the “zombie box”
by critics of the Kremlin,
Russian state television is one
of Putin’s most powerful
weapons amid his escalating
conflict with Ukraine and its
Nato allies. Even an hour
spent watching its hate-filled,
Orwellian broadcasts, where
opponents of the Kremlin are
labelled “scum” and
“traitors”, is a disorienting
and unsettling experience.
“The aim of Russia’s
special operation in Ukraine
is to prevent a global war.
Russia’s actions are, in
essence, anti-war,” saidIt was just another evening on
Russian state television when
Margarita Simonyan, the
head of the Kremlin-backed
RT media outlet, casually said
that if President Putin
decided nuclear war with
Nato was necessary, she
would accept it. “It is what it
is,” she said.
“There are two possible
paths,” added Simonyan, 42,
citing an unnamed political
analyst. “Either we lose in
Ukraine or a third world war
begins. Knowing us and our
leader, Vladimir
Vladimirovich Putin, there is
no chance that we will give
up.” The host of the current-
affairs show chipped in with
an old Putin quote about a
potential nuclear war with
the West, saying: “We will go
to heaven and they will
simply croak.” Simonyan,
who has three young
children, nodded sagely and
said: “We will all die
sometime anyway.”
Since Putin launched his
unprovoked invasion of
Ukraine on February 24, the
airwaves of Russia’s mainJulian O’Shaughnessy an “information war” with western countries. She also
writes scripts for a “political
satire” show that has featured
a racist parody of President
Obama. On current-affairs
talk shows she has tearfully
accused Ukrainian “Nazis” of
wanting to “pluck out” the
eyes of Russian children and
said the defiant nation was in
the grip of a “collective
madness”.Another of the Kremlin’s
top propaganda agents is Olga
Skabeyeva, host of the 60
Minutes current affairs show
on Rossiya 1. Dubbed Putin’s
“iron doll”, Skabeyeva is
arguably state television’s
biggest hawk. In the last week
alone she has called for
Russia to carry out a special
operation to “demilitarise”
Nato and declared: “God is
with us. And with Ukraine —
Clockwise from
far left: the
propagandists
Margarita
Simonyan,
Vladimir
Solovyov, Dmitry
Kiselyov and
Olga Skabeyeva