I came to Kharkiv (& the villages beyond) to report for @unhered. On the northeastern front Russian guns were firing from 2 sides, while Russia itself is just over 20km away. Out here you really understand the scale of #Russia's 🇷🇺 war on #Ukraine 🇺🇦. THREAD
"We call #Kharkiv the city of broken windows" says @NatalieZubar who documents #Russia war crimes in the city. Bomb damage is everywhere throughout the city. And when buildings haven't been directly hit, shockwaves from the bombs have smashed windows of the surrounding buildings.
#Russia started bombing Kharkiv really hard in the first days of the war. Planes to pound the city. It was terrifying. As well as damage they sought to use what @NatalieZubar calls "acoustic terror" - to drive people out because of the relentless thunder of their bombing.
We bow our heads to the martyrs of Odessa who were burned alive; to the martyrs in Donbas who have died fighting Fascists." Calls for a minute of silence.
Russia strength is in its multi ethnicity - you are fighting for what your grandparents fought for. Name checks the Donbas veteran present. This who defeated nazism in WWII.
“Glory to our glorious armed forces, glory to victory!
Putin: the war in #ukraine is being stoked by “NATO the aggressor.”
Saying that #Ukraine and NATO want to launch incursions into #Russia from the Donbas. No mention of failed attempt to take Kyiv. No mention of wider war beyond that so far today.
On a press call with the last fighters inside the steelworks in #Mariupol: “we are under constant shelling, including three strikes with fighter keys in the last 24 hours.”
Mariupol fighter: “we have spent two months asking the international community to evacuate civilians. Only just now it happened.”
“We will not surrender m. We will continue to fight to defend our land and against #Russia war crimes.”
The soldiers here are ready for a long fight if need be. They have big stories of ammunition. Once more: this is the return of industrial-scale army versus army war in Europe.
Nearby a Lenin bust that was once erected in a nearby town stands by a door. "Our commander is keen to give the old boy a good burial" saya Dima.
I meet with Yuriy Bereza: Ukrainian politician & #Ukrainian commander. "Way back when I was in the Soviet army in the 1990s & Russians were telling me: you fucking Banderites we're going to conquer you, I knew we were going to have to fight these fucking paedophiles."
THREAD: I’ve come to the #Donbas & onto the frontlines of eastern #Ukraine for @unherd. I was lucky enough to spend time in a - covert - Ukrainian base right near the front. I must be careful about locations etc. What follows are my thoughts & observations on the war in the east.
You get a sense of the atmosphere in Donbas where fighting is intense from the flag someone has hung on the Donetsk Oblast sign: “Russian occupiers make the best fertiliser.”
On the road we meet a “pilgrim” walking to Mariupol to rescue people there. He carries an icon & papers he claims give him authority - including a UN official’s business card. “If he gets to Mariupol it really will be divine intervention,” says my #Ukraine army friend Dima.