Let's Talk Kharkiv
Let me start this piece with the words of a resident of Kharkiv. It honestly sounds like a wartime diary (it is), like what we saw during the Second World War.
I am introducing you to the words of a real person trapped in the impossible condition of war. Why is she posting this? I will cover this in a second:
“Today I stopped by my favorite flower shop on Heroes Avenue in Kharkov. I think the electricity will be cut off during the day — I’ll put the balcony in order: I’ll wash the windows, take out the flowers, and finally replant the shoots, otherwise the roots are already a kilometer long.
It’s spring. Despite everything.
The girl meets me on the threshold and says: “Oh no, what are you talking about, it’s too early for the begonias to go to the balcony, they promise zero at night.”
And we stand with her in a stunningly smelling room with garden roses and watch the weather together. The siren screamed, we looked at each other, silently moved to the fertilizer department, away from the windows, and discussed the emergence of the dracaena from hibernation.
God, how I love my city.
It would seem that it is so big, huge, I have never even been to some areas. But so tiny.
An old lady at the market recently told me: “Today’s sour cream is a little sour, not the same as you used to take.”
Todi is at the beginning of March. Remembers.
At the gas station where we leave the car when we go to the park with Hector, all the employees know what kind of cigarettes I smoke and what kind of coffee I like. The Doberman is called “our handsome boy has arrived.” And they run to stroke behind the ear.
This is my city.
With its interjections “tu”, “la”, “sho”, which can express the entire spectrum of existing emotions.
With its endless shops, which if you sell, you can buy Monaco.
With his slight arrogance
– Not Shevchenko Park, but Shevchenko GARDEN! (rolls eyes).With its “trempel”, “bag”, “ship” — terms that are sometimes not understood even in the neighboring region.
Kharkiv.
I learned to swim in the “stinky river” on Saltovka and broke my leg for the first time while jumping from the lowest point of the “cable car” on Pavlov Pole.
I grew up in the “jelly market”, went on dates “under the thermometer”, took pictures with “dystrophics”, which visitors call a monument to lovers.
I know why the “humpbacked bridge” is humpbacked!
My city. Today he is crippled, without power, and in some areas dehydrated. Plywood windows, concrete checkpoints, gloomy faces.
Hurt.
In recent days, his name has not left the front pages of publications — “an offensive is being prepared,” “experiments with new bombs,” “evacuate.”
And yesterday’s fragment from the broadcast of the Kremlin scoundrels
– Erase Kharkov from the face of the earth!
The guys in the studio nod approvingly.
I’m not scared, no, I’m disgusted. It’s like a pedophile saying your child’s name.
I will plant begonias next week. I don’t care about your “attempts to destabilize the situation and intimidate the population.”
Fuck you, not Kharkov!”
Text by Anna Gin
(Of note, I used the spelling of the city as posted in a Russian channel)
So what is going on? While we all watch electoral season get crazier in the US, Russia is in the midst of recruitment season. They need or want about 300,000 troops.
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