Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, has been targeted by the enemy since the beginning of Russia’s offensive. Relentless Russian shelling has meant that most of the 1.5 million population has fled. No neighborhood has been spared in Kharkiv: schools and hospitals have been destroyed, housing has been torn down to rubble. With most of the city uninhabited, those left behind have gone underground.
Hundreds of people are currently seated in a subway station in Kharkiv, which was turned into a bomb shelter in anticipation of the Russian attack on Ukraine. India Today learned that many of them have not come out of their underground shelter for the past two months.
Kharkiv residents living in bomb shelters across from the subway station (Photo: India Today)
For residents of Kharkiv taking refuge in the subway, it is their life now. One man was calmly working on his laptop, while the other was taking a nap with a blanket wrapped around him, even as Russian forces attacked from above the city with bombs and artillery.
Read | From the war zone: Ukrainian forces face Russian attack to defend Kharkiv amid rain of missiles
In contrast to the chaos outside, everything is systematically placed and allocated its place in the shelter. Food, water and other relief materials are next to one pillar, a children’s library and reading shelves for adults by the other. Everyone knows in which train carriage perishable goods are kept.
Ration and relief material kept in a bomb shelter from a subway station in Kharkiv (Photo: India Today)
As the India Today team got down from the platform of the silent metro station, a 13-year-old boy named Alex came up to us. Alex said he came to the shelter with his family about 69 days ago. Metro is now his school as well as his playground.
“This is my home now. I’ve been living here for the past two months. I skate and study all day. I want to go home. I’m not afraid, I’m optimistic,” he said in stopping English, Determined to take our message across the world.
Alex’s mother Irene told India Today that she had gone to his house five days ago to get some items, but found it in ruins. “Thankfully, we came here to stay,” she said.
Pointing a corner, Irene shows us where Alex takes his lessons and how he spends his time. “He spends all day sketching and studying, there are online classes,” she said.
Since the war broke out on February 24, nearly 90 percent of Ukraine’s schools have been functioning and conducting online classes, which is a testament to the patience of the country’s people.