Comment on polskienowiny.pl
Before the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kharkiv was the second most populous city in Ukraine with a population of 1.4 million officially registered people and 2 million Ukrainians actually living there. Kharkiv is only 30-40 km from the Russian-Ukrainian state border and is subject to daily air attacks by Russian cruise and ballistic missiles, kamikaze drones and guided aerial bombs. Civilians, including children, are suffering from the Kremlin's genocidal military tactics.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, 546 children have been killed and over 1,330 children have been injured. Most victims were in Donetsk (530), Kharkiv (365), Kherson (150), Dnipropetrovsk (137), Kyiv (130), Zaporizhia (108), Mykolaiv (104) regions. These figures are not final, as in many regions where fighting continues and in the occupied territories, counting is currently impossible.
Let us recall one of the last crimes committed by Russians against the residents of Kharkiv. On May 8, the Russian army shelled one of the city's neighborhoods: a hit was registered on the territory of the school stadium. As a result of the attack, seven civilians were injured (four children, two women and one man). In the morning attack of Kharkiv, the Russians deliberately hit children! The Russian missile has “arrived“ at a school stadium in the Saltovka microdistrict, as a result of which teenagers were injured who underwent surgery and are in intensive care, and one of the students has an amputated leg. Is this how children should live in the 21st century, suffering and dying from Russian bombs?
But, despite the extremely difficult situation in the city, children are children... They want to learn, have fun and live. In the coming days, the first underground school will be opened in Kharkiv (training in regular schools is not held due to the dangerous situation in the city), in which 620 children will start studying. This will be the first underground school in Ukraine. The school is located 6 meters deep and is a de facto bunker. “Given that the number of people wishing to study regularly now significantly exceeds the number of free places in such a safe school, we very much hope that we will have time to build at least three more in other areas of the city,” said the Mayor of Kharkiv Igor Terekhov. In times of war, when access to education is limited, underground schools can be a key element in securing a nation's future.
The time for graduation is approaching and the children of Kharkiv do not want to be deprived of this memorable event. But since the city is under daily shelling by the Russian troops, future graduates are forced to rehearse simply in the middle of the street, early in the morning, at 5-30 in the morning, while there are no cars and no shelling.
Kharkov region is one of the regions of Ukraine most affected by Russian aggression. As a result of the Russian attacks in Kharkiv, almost the entire energy infrastructure was destroyed, which cannot be quickly restored. Today, despite shelling and power outages, more than one million residents remain in the city.
For Vladimir Putin, the presence of a Russian-speaking population in the city is not a factor of additional mercy. And even the opposite – Putin considers the Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv to be his property and is convinced that he can do whatever he wants with it. Kharkiv as a “second capital” of Ukraine is of symbolic importance to the Kremlin and the aggressor is seeking revenge for failing to capture Kharkiv in 2022 and then being forced to withdraw its troops from most of the metropolitan area.
But representatives of Russian propaganda are trying to present the intensification of terror in the Kharkiv region as supposedly “revenge“ about the military actions of the Russian volunteers in the Kursk and Belgorod region of the Russian Federation, as well as about the terrorist attack in the Crocus City Hall, groundlessly blaming Ukraine for it.
In March of this year, Putin first used the term “sanitary zone” in relation to the Kharkiv region bordering Russia. This term applies to areas that are uninhabitable as a result of man-made or natural disasters. So making Kharkiv uninhabitable is one of the goals of the Russians. The proximity of the city to the Russian border, according to the Kremlin, greatly simplifies the task of committing genocide against civilians. Putin's impunity encourages him to commit new war crimes that may spread beyond Ukraine's borders, as Russian threats have already been made more than once against Ukraine's European allies.
The security of the Kharkiv region can be guaranteed by the deployment of additional air defense systems and the creation of a demilitarized zone on Russian territory. Western air defense systems are capable of shooting down almost all types of Russian missiles that the enemy uses to attack Ukraine. Thanks to them, tens, even hundreds of thousands of lives have already been saved.
In order to save from complete destruction Kharkiv and other border cities of Ukraine, which are shelled daily by Russian troops, the member states of the “Rammstein coalition” they must as soon as possible hand over to the Ukrainian army modern anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense systems capable of neutralizing ballistic and hypersonic missiles. In addition, in order to neutralize Russian missile launchers, drone launch pads, and runways for tactical aircraft and bombers, it is imperative to lift the ban on Ukrainian armed forces using Western weapons on the internationally recognized territory of the Russian Federation. The Allies allow the use of their weapons only on the territory of Crimea and four regions of Ukraine, included by the Kremlin in the Russian Federation.