In eastern Ukraine’s largest city, pro-Russian sympathies fade as war looms

Next to it, a banner asks, “Is Kharkiv next?”

Back in 2014, when Ukraine’s military conflict with Russia began, pro-Moscow militants seized this government complex, planted a Russian flag on its roof, and declared a short-lived breakaway republic.

At the time, pro-Russian sentiment was high in this industrial city of 1.4 million people, only a half-hour drive from the border.

Eight years later, as Russia has gathered more than 100,000 troops around Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pointed to Kharkiv as a potential target of an invasion.

But while the city has been a relatively easy target for Moscow in the past, sentiment here has shifted dramatically against the Kremlin. Any Russian military operation in Kharkiv may now face significant resistance from civilians.

In 2014, with street clashes and gunfire between pro-Russian and pro-Ukraine groups, it seemed for a few days that highly Russian-speaking Kharkiv, like nearby Donetsk and Luhansk, would slip out of Kyiv’s control. Only the intervention of a rapid reaction force sent from southwestern Ukraine restored central authority here.

Today, the newly created 113th Territorial-Defense Brigade, part of a military force that will defend Kharkiv against a potential invasion, has more volunteers than Slott, and is starting to turn people away, its commanders say. . A second Kharkiv brigade is being formed to take these recruits.

“It’s every section of society, from nuclear physicists to shop assistants to engineers to students,” says Mykhailo Sokolov, chief noncommissioned officer of the 113th Brigade. We are all asking to join in our homes, our homes. Spouses will protect their children, their lovers. With weapons in our hands. If their aviation tries to destroy us from the air, we will dig to fight from under the ground. Where can we retreat? Nowhere to go. This is our own land.”

The reason for this defiance is simple: Kharkiv residents are keenly aware of what has happened in Donetsk and Luhansk since the region came under Russian influence in 2014. The economy there has shrunk. Businesses, homes and cars were confiscated by Russian-founded militias. Those suspected of pro-Kiev sympathies were shot or imprisoned. Most of the residents who fled to the government-occupied parts of Ukraine, especially Kharkiv, or more prosperous Russia.

Even traditionally pro-Russian politicians in Kharkiv acknowledge the strength of this example.

“There are no fools anymore. People see that things are bad in Donetsk and Luhansk, and things are good here. They have war there and we have peace and tranquility here,” says Sergei Gladkossk, who serves the country in Kharkiv’s regional legislature. The main Moscow-friendly party, heads the opposition Forum for Life.

So far, there are few signs of distress in the city. Shopping malls, restaurants and bars are full of customers, and no armed forces or military equipment can be seen on the streets of Kharkiv. There is no panic buying, and supermarkets are fully stocked.

Kharkiv Regional Government Oleh Sinihubov says he has recently visited Ukrainian military units stationed along the border and was told that there was no unusual Russian military activity within 50 kilometers of the border suggesting an invasion in the immediate future. was seen. So far the only indicator of potential trouble, he says, is that some car importers have been reluctant to send new vehicles to Kharkiv showrooms, aware of how new cars were looted from Donetsk dealerships in 2014.

Kharkiv has a special place in the history of Ukraine. When the Soviet Union annexed an independent Ukraine a century earlier, they established Kharkiv as the capital of the new Ukrainian Soviet Republic. The Soviet-Ukrainian government, seated in Kharkiv’s modernist Derzprom building, considered Europe’s first skyscraper, returned to Kiev in 1934.

A showcase of Stalin’s industrialization campaign, Kharkiv was also one of the centers of Soviet military power, from tank manufacturing to nuclear-bomb technologies. Those industries began to decay in 1991 as new international borders in Russia cut off from traditional customers and suppliers. Many closed down entirely after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and fueled military conflicts in Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014.

“The attitude of local traders towards Russia is now mostly negative. We have lost a lot from this conflict, the market is feverish due to the constant threat of invasion, and Russian gas prices have become so high that it is no longer possible to use No,” says Oleksandr Popov, who owns a hunting-rifle manufacturer, a network of fitness clubs and a security company in Kharkiv. Mr. Popov says these companies currently employ 600 people in total, down from about 2,000 in 2014.

Back in 2014, when Russian militants entered Kharkiv across the then-porous border, about 30% of the city’s population retained loyalty to the Ukrainian state, estimates Kostyantin Nemichev, who united pro-Ukrainian groups in the city. He heads the Defense Committee and leads the local branch of the far-right National Corps party.

After being evicted from street protests in Kiev in February 2014, Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovich initially flew to Kharkiv, where a congress of pro-Russian politicians and elected officials from eastern and southern Ukraine had convened. After staying here for some time, Mr. Yanukovich left for Crimea and then fled to Russia.

At the time, Mr Nemichev was a 19-year-old fan of the local football team, FC Metalist, whose supporters fought street fights against pro-Russian youths as Kharkiv’s law-enforcement officials remained largely neutral, to see which side. Will emerge victorious.

After weeks of wrangling, Henady Cairns, a former ally of Mr. Yanukovich, the city’s mayor and power broker, sided with the Ukrainian state, and escaped shortly after being shot by a sniper. Local pro-Russian groups, the militants of Oplot, fled the city to Donetsk, and many other locals with pro-Russian sympathies have since moved to Russia.

Now, Mr Nemichev estimates, about 70% of the city’s residents are loyal to Ukraine, a quarter, mostly older people, remain nostalgic for the Soviet past and only 5% actively support Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Pro-Russian forces are no longer present on the street. Pro-Ukrainian forces are too strong, too large, and they have a ton of military experience,” says Mr. Nemichev, a Ukrainian army veteran who backed Russia in Donetsk in 2014. The soldiers had joined a volunteer battalion to fight. “If Russian forces were to come here, they would probably stop on the outskirts of Kharkiv and try to elevate these pro-Russian forces from within. Our duty as Kharkivs would be to quell these separatist sentiments while our military does its job. “

The extent of remaining support for the Kremlin is hard to measure, as publicly supporting annexation of Kharkiv to Russia is a criminal offense under Ukrainian law. Ukraine intelligence service billboards throughout Kharkiv provide a hotline for dealing with separatist threats. Nevertheless, in some parts of the city, graffiti declaring “Russia: Offensive” has been altered to become unreadable, possibly by locals who hold a different view of Moscow.

Unlike Kiev, which has undergone a linguistic change over the past eight years, with a large portion of the population choosing to communicate in Ukrainian instead of Russian, Kharkiv is Russian-speaking like many other cities in eastern and southern Ukraine. However, it should not be mistaken for local affinity with the Kremlin or Mr Putin, said Tetyana Yehorova-Lutsenko, the head of the Kharkiv regional legislature.

“Even if people communicate in Russian, they certainly don’t have the same way of thinking as people who live in Russia, or people who want to live in Russia,” she said. “They think in the Ukrainian way. They want to live in the country in peace.”

This story has been published without modification to the text from a wire agency feed