“There was smoke everywhere here. This building was facing north, the wrong side.” From the kitchen of an apartment, on the 9th floor, Olga Federova, explains to us that her building and the entire Saltivka district, in Kharkiv, in the North-East of Ukraine, are in the line of sight of the army Russian: “Over there, there is the village of Tsyrkuni which is occupied. The Russians are targeting us with rockets from there.”
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We are with his neighbors. Olga came with her daughter, Olia, to pick up some things there. We still see a fried egg left on a plate on the 7th day of the war. “Within an hour they took their things and left, she says. There are the parents, two children, one is 16 years old and another boy is 11 years old.”
The second largest city in the country has been, since the beginning of the Russian invasion, one of the main targets of enemy artillery. The fighting has turned Saltivka’s very tall row of buildings into a phantom zone, a large frontline area. It’s the most dangerous place in town. And yet there are always inhabitants. Tatiana lives with her mother, on the 4th floor. Their building is almost empty, there are only six families left: “It’s a humanitarian disaster.”
“My mother is 77 years old. She cannot go down to the bottom of the building. So you imagine going to take refuge in the metro.”
Tatiana, resident of Saltivkaat franceinfo
In the building on the right, on the 14th floor, two apartments were gutted by a bombardment. Pavel also lives in this doomsday setting. Despite the war and the material conditions. “VSthose who left are those who live upstairs on the upper floors, he says. Me, I don’t care. When it’s your time, it’s your time.”
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Many residents have left the city. Those who remain are often the poorest or the most engaged. For Olia, it is an act of resistance: “What the Russians want is for us to panic, to surrender, to abandon this place. That’s why people stayed, including in very dangerous areas. only go when it is a direct threat to their lives.”
Some residents who had fled even chose to return to Kharkiv.