Kharkiv has suffered the most of Ukraine’s major cities during the full-scale war. Russian strikes have damaged more than 14,000 buildings, most of them residential.
Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said this during a discussion organised by LB and EFI Group. He explained that the situation in Kharkiv is affected by its distance from the front line.
“We had — and the number is growing every day — 14,000 buildings that were either damaged or destroyed. 10,000 of these are residential buildings belonging to Kharkiv residents. There is nowhere else with destruction like this. 160,000 Kharkiv residents have been left without a roof over their heads. We need to understand this,” he said.
Terekhov stressed that Kharkiv has always been and will remain a Ukrainian city. At the start of the full-scale war, enemy sabotage and reconnaissance groups entered the city, but special units and the National Guard of Ukraine completely eliminated them. Occupiers were positioned beyond the ring road and fired directly at homes.
“Every type of weapon the Russians had was used in the city of Kharkiv — from aircraft to tanks, armoured personnel carriers and everything else,” the mayor said.
At the beginning of the war, 160,000 Kharkiv residents lived around the clock in the underground. People were evacuated through the metro tunnels to the railway station. In some cases, they had to walk 11 kilometres or more. Of Kharkiv’s two million residents, only about 320,000 remained in 2022.