Talk of Ukraine Peace Deal Seems Surreal in Kharkiv After Massive Russian Drone Attacks
Kharkiv: Early this morning, Russian missiles again hit Kharkiv city in northeastern Ukraine. This time, in a massive drone attack, local media reports 20 sites across the city were struck in an intense two hours.
The iconic Barabashovo market in the east of the city was hit around 4am, causing a huge fire and large-scale damage. According to locals, it’s the largest market in eastern Ukraine, the 14th biggest in the world, taking up around 185 acres.
When I visited it this morning, hours after the strike, the cleanup had already begun, with shopkeepers sweeping glass and picking through the rubble for what little could be retrieved. Small shops in the areas untouched by the missile attack were already open.
Like many similar markets across Ukraine you can buy almost anything here, from wedding dresses to flip-flops and sunglasses. Here too there are shops specializing in Vietnamese noodles and sauces, catering partly for Kharkiv’s large Vietnamese community around this district.
The part of the market hit by the missile was the area selling kids’ toys, a new section only opened a couple of weeks ago. There were a few half-melted Rubik’s Cubes scattered across the burnt-out debris this morning, and, miraculously, a yellow toy car. But the rest of the area, several acres wide, was just a mass of twisted metal and smouldering plastic.
Thankfully the missile hit in the early hours, and no one was killed. If the attack had happened a few hours later, at 8am, there would have been thousands of casualties.
Russian forces have already struck the city in dozens of attacks this week, day and night. There were more during the day today, with air raid alarms sounding every couple of hours.
I’ve been reporting regularly from Kharkiv since soon after Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion. Exactly three years ago this week yesterday I wrote from the metro station at the Barabashovo market, where people were then living underground to escape from the shelling and the city was under siege.
Kharkiv is much changed from then, and shops and cafes are open again. No one is living in the metro system now, and the Russian army has been pushed back from where it was in May 2022, albeit only by about 10 miles.
But threat of another major Russian assault on the city is ever-present, and locals spend their nights sitting in the corridors of their homes, hoping that being between two walls will protect them from the missile attacks. Others sleep in basements, and some just stay in bed, weary after three years under almost constant bombardment, taking their chances and hoping they won’t be hit.
When I ask locals here what they think about the chances of a peace deal coming soon they laugh at the absurdity of the question. “That’s just a surreal idea to us here,” said one. “It doesn’t feel much like we’re on the brink of peace.”
The city remains under intense bombardment, with more missile attacks expected tonight.
