The Devastation of Kharkiv, Ukraine | The New Yorker

I visited Kharkiv less than a month before Russian missiles started striking it. Most of the people I met there—and all of the men whom I met there—told me that they, and the city, were ready for war. They thought they knew what war was. A Russian-orchestrated attempt to take over the city had failed in 2014, but, just to the east of Kharkiv, an occupation regime was established, and a shooting war went on for eight years. A giant blue-and-yellow tent in Freedom Square, with a banner that said “Everything for victory,” stood as a stubborn reminder that the war wasn’t over. Then Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. Within a few weeks, Kharkiv was unrecognizable.