KHARKIV, Ukraine – In the tense months following the EuroMaidan Revolution in Kyiv, many feared Kharkiv – Ukraine’s second-largest city with 1.4 million people – might slip into revolt as the Kremlin-sponsored war against eastern Ukraine began to spread.
Today, Ukraine’s former capital, some 570 kilometers east of Kyiv and only 200 kilometers from the conflict-ravaged Donbas, looks to have escaped the turmoil caused by the war. Blue and yellow national flags hang over its streets, the city’s old monument to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin has been toppled and the process of decommunization has begun.
Kharkiv now hosts pro-Ukrainian organizations, allows nationalist rallies and is a new home to thousands of citizens who have fled the fighting in the east. Foreign students from Asia and the Middle East are still coming to study medicine here, despite the war.
And while there are still those with pro-Russian sympathies in the city, they are keeping their heads down, activists say.
Failed takeover
In April 2014, after Russia invaded Crimea and ignited conflict in the Donbas, Kharkiv could well have suffered the fate that befell Donetsk and Luhansk.
Around 70 pro-Kremlin separatists seized the building of Kharkiv Oblast Administration on April 7. But after just a few hours, a special police unit headed by then top cop and current Interior Minister Arsen Avakov evicted the armed activists from the building and arrested them.
“Only now do I see how lucky we were that the KhPR (the Kharkiv People’s Republic) didn’t happen here; only now I appreciate that,” local journalist Eugene Streltsov told the Kyiv Post.
Today, pro-Russians keep quiet about their political preferences. But Streltsov said that up to 10 percent of Kharkiv’s residents may prefer to live under Russian rule. About 20 percent of the city’s people maintain an active pro-Ukrainian position, while the majority – 60-70 percent – are politically neutral.
Despite the war, Kharkiv’s citizens haven’t stopped visiting Russia: the closest boder crossing is only some 40 kilometers from the city. People come and go, to see relatives and look for job opportunities.
Valeriy Popov, a middle-aged builder, said the war hasn’t influenced his relations with Russians. He and his friends see nothing wrong with going there. Among his acquaintances, at least 100 former Kharkiv citizens continue to work in Moscow, getting “a proper salary,” he said.
He also goes to Russia regularly for personal reasons, sometimes visiting friends. “We had normal relations, and they have remained like that,” he said of the Russians he often meets on his trips. “It’s the politicians who are fighting. And how about us? This war is useless for us,” he added.
Nationalists
“The main problem is that we don’t have burning torches,” says Yuriy Lyhota, a local leader of the Right Sector radical nationalist organization in Kharkiv. In the conference room of the Nakipelo civil media center, members of radical organizations are hammering out the program of and upcoming event – the national Day of the Defender on Oct. 14, which was first celebrated as a state holiday in 2015.
Finally, a torch-lit rally, the lighting of candles in the shape of the national symbol, the Tryzub (trident), listening to patriotic songs, and speeches from soldiers are included in the event plan. No political parties are invited to address attendees of the event.
The activists expected around 3,000 people to attend the event, but fewer than 1,000 actually turned up, according to the police.
But nationalists say their organizations have more members and supporters in Kharkiv since the war in eastern Ukraine broke out. “The (increase) is very obvious, because we’d never have heard the hymn of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) in Kharkiv in 2012-2013,” said Taras Bortnik, the head of a branch of the Nationalist Youth Congress, one of the organizations taking part in the discussion.
Economic recession and loss of trust in the government has also caused an increase in support for the nationalists, they said. Plus, the continuing war in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts has shown Kharkiv “what could happen if a person doesn’t support one’s country.”
Support for mayor
While most citizens are apathetic about national politics, there is strong support for the city’s mayor, Hennadiy Kernes, who was re-elected in 2015 with 65.8 percent of the vote in the first round. Turnout was 44.4 percent.
Kernes first became the city’s mayor in 2010, when he was an ally of former President Viktor Yanukovych. During the EuroMaidan Revolution, Kernes was accused of hiring thugs to attack anti-government protesters. But after Yanukovych fled the country, Kernes pivoted politically and declared loyalty to the new authorities.
In April 2014, Kernes survived an assassination attempt: he was shot in the back by a sniper during a bicycle ride. He now uses a wheelchair because of the injury.
A woman looks through a tram window as autumn falls on Kharkiv on Oct. 7 (Anastasia Vlasova).
A criminal probe into Kernes and two of his bodyguards was announced in March 2015. They were accused of kidnapping and torturing EuroMaidan activists. Court hearings into the case have been postponed several times, with the latest ones scheduled for October.
Today, Kernes heads the local election list of the Revival Party (Vidrodzhennia), which includes a number of former Yanukovych allies and holds a majority of the seats on the city council. He has criticized for his ties with former government officials and connections in Russian, and has been accused of corruption, including land seizures. He denies all of the allegations.
But almost every citizen the Kyiv Post spoke to (apart from pro-Ukrainian activists) said they support Kernes.
“He’s a good mayor,” said a middle-aged engineer, Serhiy Lunyo. “I don’t know why he’s criticized so much.”
Lunyo said that the majority of reconstruction work done since Ukrainian independence had taken place under Kernes’ management, namely the remodeling of the central park, repairs of roads and traffic lights, the rebuilding of housing entranceways and roofs, and the new stadium and airport – rebuilt for the Euro 2012 football championship.
Taras Sitenko of the Samopomich Party, who came second in the 2015 mayoral election with 12 percent of the vote, is one of the few voices of opposition to Kernes. A deputy on the city council, he has a tough time opposing the Kernes-dominated body.
The renovation and maintenance of the Maxim Gorky Central Park, the pride of Kharkiv’s citizens, costs the city budget around Hr 70 million ($2.8 million) annually, Sitenko said. At the same time, Kharkiv Oblast Administration plans to spend 12 times less than that on its defense plan – some Hr 5.7 million ($228,000). Moreover, the city council is yet to allocate a penny for defense purposes from this year’s Hr 10 billion ($400 million) city budget, Sitenko said.
In the city council, Sitenko focuses on land allocation, education, and social issues. He said all initiatives have first to be approved by Kernes, who heads the leading party in the council.
“Kernes has an obvious advantage, and he sees his electorate very clearly and constantly panders to them,” Sitenko said.
Student city
While economic turmoil and war have made many business people leery of investing in Ukraine, the country’s problems have not discouraged students from Jordan, Vietnam, China, Turkey, and Africa from choosing to study at Kharkiv’s universities.
Turkish citizen Sasan Oglo, 28, moved to Ukraine three months ago to study medicine at the National Kharkiv University. His brother studies at the same faculty.
“It’s bad when a person thinks of war – here life is good, so I’m glad,” Oglo said.
Oglo and around 70 of his fellow Turks at the university have a good reason to get a degree in Ukraine – here, tuition fees are $2,200, while at home the same course would cost a minimum of $7,000.
Although his Russian is not so good, he said this hasn’t prevented him from learning. He said many of his friends had gone to Russia to study medicine, and he had tried to live there himself. But he quit and moved to Kharkiv, where “people are less angry,” he said.
Ukrainian Mykhailyna Marchuk studies in Kharkiv too. But for her, the city is now a safe haven from worn-torn Luhansk. Marchuk and her parents are among the estimated 1.7 million internally displaced people, who have been forced to flee their homes in Ukraine because of the war.
She was a school student when the constant fighting forced her and her family to move from Luhansk in 2014. Marchuk first moved to Sievierodonetsk in Luhansk Oblast, and she then applied to the geographic faculty in Kharkiv National University. “It takes just several kilometers (to get away from the war), but you get a normal life,” she said of moving from Luhansk.
She and her parents were afraid of lawlessness, with Kremlin-backed fighters walking around with weapons in their hands. A quarter of her 25 classmates have fled the occupied territories, while the rest stayed and now study in local institutions, Marchuk said.
“It’s much better here, and I’m in a good mood,” she said of living in Kharkiv.
“You know, it’s like comparing heaven and hell.”
