A12 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, MAY 28 , 2022
war in ukrainetacks, though, city workers main-
tained basic public services —
water, electricity, even garbage
collection. City courts operated
via remote hookups.
Only transportation came to a
halt, including the subway, as
people sought shelter in stations
throughout the city. Before thewar, about 450,000 passengers
passed through the turnstiles on
an average day, said Yulia Fedi-
anina, station manager at the
Heroes of Labor stop. Restarting
service this week has meant coax-
ing people to leave, she said, and
getting them to cart out all the
things they retrieved from homeduring lulls in the fighting.
And there was still a lot left:
beds, cots, mattresses, at least
one geodesic tent and a double
bunk set up near the ticket ki-
osks. Also tables, chairs, stools,
stools doubling as tables, crock-
ery, silverware, food tins, bottles
of water, clothing, shoes and —
here and there — touches of
color: a pair of framed religious
icons, a print of a bird on a silk
scarf, freshly cut lilacs in a vase.
And there were pet carriers, litter
boxes, water dishes and kibble
bowls for dogs and cats.
Somehow, despite the circum-
stances — including a single
primitive toilet — hundreds of
strangers managed to get along.
(If anything, Fedianina said, the
pets got along even better.)
In the cramped space — with
individual plots often walled off
with cardboard boxes — friend-
ships formed. So did romances.
There were breakups, too. Fedi-
anina said she thought about
setting up two tables for counsel-ing — one for marriages, the
other for divorce.
“Some of them even said, ‘I
never loved you. I stayed with you
15 years because of the kids!’ ”
Fedianina remembered. Some
couples were bold enough to
have sex on the crowded plat-
forms.
“I did!” a man said, overhear-
ing her talking about it.
Only about 80 people were still
living full-time in the Heroes of
Labor station; another 60 re-
turned at night to shelter from
possible shelling. There were
fewer at Studentska.
Oksana Yarmok, 35, who
worked as an editor for a small
social media company before the
war, ventured home last week,
only to have Russian explosives
chase her back into the metro
station.
“It’s a 30-minute walk from
here, 20 minutes if you run,” she
said. “It’s not really safe.”
Yuliantseva was also wary
about returning home.
“If it was the end of the war, I’d
be the first one out of here,” she
said, as she packed her things the
day before she planned to move
and less than an hour after the
city had been s helled a gain. Near-
by, Mattvii sat hunched over his
phone. Their white house cat,
Semyon, presided from the foot
of her bed.
Even before the war, Yuliantse-
va — a single mother and a
psychologist by training — had
taken time away from work to
devote extra care to her son’s
special needs, including a speech
impediment.
Now she worried about the
effect of war on his psyche. Be-
fore they were driven out of their
home, she had a rule for her son:
no more than one hour on the
phone — but so much for that in a
bomb shelter.
“Mattvii, don’t do that,” she
said at one point, interrupting
her conversation because he was
being a little rough with the cat.
When it came time to go Tues-
day, s he cleaned out the litter box,
gathered her things and walked
down a flight of stairs, holding
the cat carrier and towing a
heavy wheeled bag. Mattvii fol-
lowed with his belongings.
They crossed the platform past
idled trains, climbed a set of
stairs, spoke with a security
guard who asked whether she
would be coming back, then
headed down a corridor to yet
another set of stairs. Out in the
bright sunlight, she hugged her
son. It took an hour for their bus
to arrive.
Three stops later, they got out
near a checkpoint and passed
several damaged buildings be-
fore turning onto their street
where — just beyond the side-
walk’s edge — a blast had carved
a crater eight feet wide. Then five
more flights o f stairs and a search
for her key before she could open
the door.
“I’m home.”Serhii Korolchuk contributed to this
reportFROM TOP: Yulia Yuliantseva
and her son, Mattvii, are on
their way home in Kharkiv,
Ukraine, on Monday after
living in a subway station for
weeks. G alyna Chorna, 76, sits
outside her home in the city’s
Saltivka district. The Heroiv
Pratsi subway station is seen
last month. People gather to
collect free food from Hare
Kryszna outside the Studentska
station.BY FREDRICK KUNKLEkharkiv, ukraine — Yulia
Yuliantseva’s journey home took
longer than her flight to safety,
yet each step was accompanied
by many of the same fears.
Nearly three months ago, she
and her 12-year-old son, Mattvii,
fled their apartment in Kharkiv
and ran through the snow to the
nearest subway station — she in
flip-flops, her son in stocking feet
— as Russian forces pounded the
city with rockets and heavy artil-
lery.
Though no part of the city was
spared, Yuliantseva’s neighbor-
hood of Saltivka, in the north-
eastern part of the city, was
among the hardest hit. Thou-
sands of her neighbors sheltered
with her in the Studentska sta-
tion.
This week, as Yuliantseva and
her son packed to go after nearly
three months in their makeshift
bomb shelter, mixed emotions
flooded over them. They missed
their home but were afraid of
periodic shelling. They were re-
luctant to leave the safety of the
station but couldn’t b ear t o spend
another day underground, in
close quarters with dozens of
other families.
Most of all, Yuliantseva wor-
ried about her son’s fragile men-
tal state. Would he be able to
sleep at night? Would his speech
impediment get worse?
“It’s scary to return home,”
said Yuliantseva, 41, adding that
it was even scarier knowing there
was nothing but sky between her
fifth-floor walk-up and a Russian
airstrike. “I’m always going to be
afraid.”
As the Ukrainian military con-
tinues to drive Russian forces
back in the north, residents of
Ukraine’s second-largest city
have begun to dig out. City offi-
cials estimate 2,500 to 5,
residents have returned each day,
even as Russian Grad rockets
continue to terrorize the popu-
lace.
“It’s really difficult to restart
life in the city when the Russian
aggressor continues hitting it,”
Mayor Ihor Terekhov said in an
interview. On Thursday, seven
people were killed and 17 injured
in indiscriminate shelling, a re-
gional official reported on Tele-
gram.
Yet residents are determined
to return things to normal. Work-
ers swept broken glass, un-
snarled downed electric wires
and trimmed the grassy medians
of mostly deserted boulevards. A
humanitarian aid station handed
out flour, sugar and pasta to
hundreds of people waiting in
line. Others bought bread or
produce from the backs of deliv-
ery trucks. Near the city center, at
Specialty Cafe, baristas drew pic-
tures in the foam of freshly
brewed cappuccinos and a group
of Ukrainian soldiers downed
breakfast as one of them Face-
Timed with someone back home.
But there is destruction every-
where. Large apartment towers
scorched, peppered with shrap-
nel or partially collapsed. Busi-
nesses gutted. On the side of a
disabled van used as a roadblock,
a spray-painted message: “Warn-
ing!!! Shelling!!!”
“I just ducked and tried to hide
inside the apartment,” said Galy-
na Chorna, sitting on a bench
outside her apartment building,
which was untouched but mostly
vacant. Chorna, a former factory
worker who waited 15 years to get
her spot in the building when
Ukraine was part of the Soviet
Union, said she was still in shock
over the Russian invasion.
“I couldn’t believe they would
attack us because we’re inter-
twined,” the 76-year-old said.
Nearby, a similar apartment
building had partially collapsed,
killing at least one tenant, ac-
cording to neighbors.
The mayor wouldn’t say how
many residents have been killed
since Russian President Vladimir
Putin launched the war Feb. 24.
He said bodies are still being
found beneath the rubble.
“This was really a genocide
against Ukrainians,” Terekhov
said. Nearly 2,500 apartment
buildings and approximately
1,000 single-family homes were
damaged, he said. Russian forces
also struck more than 200
schools, 55 medical buildings,
five churches and nearly 50 cul-
tural institutions, including the
Kharkiv Art Museum.
“The numbers are staggering,”
Terekhov said.
Even during the heaviest at-
After months underground, residents find a city in ruins
PHOTOS BY WOJCIECH GRZEDZINSKI FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTThousands return home
after sheltering in
Kharkiv subway stationsThere is destructioneverywhere. Largeapartment towersscorched, pepperedwith shrapnel orpartially collapsed.Businesses gutted.