When Russian missiles attacked the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv a couple of weeks ago, schoolchildren and their teachers ensconced in newly built underground classrooms heard nothing.
In the bowels of Kharkiv’s cavernous Soviet-era metro stations, the city administration has built a line of brightly decorated classrooms, where 6- and 7-year-old children attend primary school for the first time in their lives in this war. devastated city.
“The children were fine,” said Lyudmyla Demchenko, 47, one of the teachers. “You can’t hear the sirens down here.”
Ten years after conflict with Russian-backed separatists broke out and two years after the full-scale invasion of Moscow, Ukrainians are tired but ever determined to repel the invaders. The war has affected all families: thousands of civilians dead, nearly 200,000 soldiers dead and wounded and almost 10 million refugees and displaced people in a country of almost 45 million inhabitants. Yet despite death, destruction and deprivation, most Ukrainians remain optimistic about the future and even describe themselves as happy, according to independent surveys.
Kharkiv is a good example. It is located just 40 kilometers from the Russian border and has suffered its share of Russian artillery, drone and missile attacks. Most families fled at the beginning of the war or lived for months underground in the subway when Russian troops were about to take over the city. But the Ukrainian defenses held, the families returned and the city came to life.
In December, when Russian missile attacks intensified again, most people stayed put. Kyryl Rohachov, 22, even opened a cocktail bar on one of Kharkiv’s main avenues with a childhood friend who now runs the business.
Days before the inauguration in January, missile attacks shattered buildings and windows along the street. “It’s not the best time,” Rohachov admitted in a video call from Switzerland, where he works in a restaurant and cares for his orphaned brother and his own family. “But I want to bring something new to my lovely Kharkov.”
In a recent opinion poll conducted by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, the overwhelming majority of respondents, almost 90 percent, said they still believed in Ukraine’s victory, as long as Western aid continued.
More than 60 percent of respondents considered themselves happy, although most said they had lost income and suffered from physical and mental health problems. A similar number said they had lost at least one family member or friend, said Anton Hrushetsky, director of the institute.
People seriously lowered their lives and expectations, he said, adding: “It keeps their happiness level higher.”
However, there are signs of small but growing pessimism, he said. In December, 19 percent of respondents said they were willing to make concessions to Russia to end the war, up from 10 percent in May.
That pessimism was directly related to declining Western support for Ukraine, Hrushetsky said.
“When they see this insufficient support and these political problems in the United States, in the Western European states, they become more depressed and more pessimistic,” he said.
It is already being felt in the ranks of the military, where commanders complain of ammunition and manpower shortages as fewer men enlist. Soldiers say they have noticed that when they enter a cafe or restaurant in uniform, people turn around or clear the room, fearful that the soldiers might be recruiting officers serving out recruiting documents.
The pain and loss everyone feels is evident in the constant funerals across the country and the growing military cemeteries. A crowd of 300 people came to the town of Kamianske on a recent day to say goodbye to a fallen soldier. Everyone, old and young, knelt on the frozen ground as his coffin passed on the way to the cemetery.
The suffering caused by the Russian invasion has hardened attitudes in Kharkiv. In 2022, part of the province experienced a brutal occupation that lasted seven months and the bombings continue. This month, two families, including three children, were burned alive in their homes when missiles hit a fuel depot, setting fire to a row of adjoining houses.
“Every missile fired at us only fuels our fury,” said Kharkiv provincial police chief investigator Serhii Bolvinov, who has opened thousands of criminal cases against Russia for rape, torture and arbitrary killings, as well as for deaths and property loss from the bombing.
“Each of us hates the Russians to the utmost,” he said. “And it is difficult to understand when it will start to decrease. Because for now it is only growing.”
Anatolii Kozyr, 72, played a video on his mobile phone of his farm and home, 130 kilometers east of Kharkiv, which were destroyed by Russian attacks a month ago.
“My whole life I was gathering and organizing, and in a moment it all disappeared,” he said. He lost 3,000 tons of grain, 1,000 pigs, a workshop and farm machinery, he claimed. “There was nothing left.”
The Russians are now less than two miles from his village and he sees little hope of returning. “They are moving forward,” he said.
Dr. Maryna Prokopenko, 28, a surgeon at the Kharkiv Regional Hospital, calms her nerves by working and, in her free time, boxing to vent her anger.
He fled to Poland at the beginning of the war but, homesick, returned to Kharkiv after a month. An ear, nose and throat specialist, he spends most of his time healing injured civilians.
“We try to work a lot because it really is a distraction,” he said. “I have a job and I am calm and strong.”
Like many Ukrainians, he longs for the war to end. “When I see all these injuries and destroyed bodies, and so many physical disabilities, it’s horrible,” he said. “I want this war to end.”
But when asked about ceding territory in a peace treaty or ceding Kharkiv to Russian control, he rejected the prospect out of hand.
Among the pessimists were two neighbors in their 80s, Raisa and Svitlana, who were walking through the snow in Kharkiv.
They criticized the leaders who provoked the war. “I hope they lose their ambition and negotiate,” Svitlana said, adding that Zelensky would have to give ground. “He can’t win.” The women only gave their first names to avoid recriminations.
Some analysts have said that pro-democracy changes introduced several years ago that brought greater accountability to local government have helped bolster Ukraine’s resilience. Ukraine also has many natural leaders in addition to its military and political commanders.
One of Kharkiv’s most beloved characters is Serhii Zhadan, a 50-year-old punk rocker, poet, novelist and lyricist who tours the country entertaining his fans and supporting soldiers on the front. Last Sunday he gave a raucous performance in Kharkiv, at one point paying tribute to a group of leather-clad motorcyclists who have been repairing and delivering motorcycles to the troops.
Zhadan has written scathing verse during the 10 years of war, including a moving poem about the loss of a childhood friend from his home province of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine. And he has immortalized in song the children of Kharkov, who lived for weeks in the subway at the beginning of the war.
Angry and cheerful children from the basements of Kharkiv
Children who live in the depths of the subway.
Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting from kyiv and Kharkiv, Ukraine, and Denys Tsyba from Kharkiv.