From the frontline: If Kharkiv falls, all of Ukraine falls

In the early days of the invasion, Kharkiv held off a column of Russian tanks in eastern Ukraine. Since then it has suffered nightly Russian airstrikes and shelling, killing dozens of civilians and injuring hundreds. The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville and cameraman Darren Conway have spent the week with Ukrainian forces fighting to halt another Russian advance.

This report contains material that some viewers will find disturbing

The first casualty of war is time. Ask the young soldier at the front when the attack took place or the old lady in the hospital bed when her house was shelled and they look at you in confusion. Was it 24 hours ago or 48? The days have become one, they tell you.

In Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, time is elastic. It is close to the border with Russia and the nightly shelling from Russian artillery and fighter planes does not leave us in peace. The past two weeks have felt like an eternity, and yet the peace can be remembered as if it were yesterday.

In a frozen landscape on the northeastern outskirts of the city, 21-year-old Lieutenant Yevgen Gromadsky stands with outstretched hands. Trenches have been dug nearby. “Outgoing,” he says, raising his right hand to accompany the roar of fire from his positions. “Incoming,” he says, and his left hand ticks up. With a crump, Russian shells are fired from their positions 900 m away over snow-covered fields.

On the outskirts of the bombed-out village, the shelling continues like clockwork – “Incoming, outgoing, incoming, outgoing”, Lt. Gromadsky snaps his hands at every report.

We only met this afternoon, but I already know that his father Oleg was killed defending the city last week and Lt. Gromadsky is the seventh generation of military in his family. He’s planning an eighth, in a free Ukraine.

He describes the fight so far: “Sabotage groups are examining our lines, we have direct tank battles. First they fire mortar shells, then tanks fire at our positions.” The first casualty of war is time. Ask the young soldier at the front when the attack took place or the old lady in the hospital bed when her house was shelled and they look at you in confusion. Was it 24 hours ago or 48? The days have become one, they tell you.

We move from position to position along the front lines. In his armored vehicle, a Russian Army hat – a trophy from their first conquest – hangs from the ceiling, and he continues: “We’re firing back with anti-tank missiles and also the usual small arms. They dismount, they disperse, there are always a lot of people.”

Inside the truck are Mexican Day of the Dead air fresheners. Grinning skulls hang from every corner as we hop down a rutted dirt road. Rocket-powered grenade launchers roll around on the ground.

From the passenger seat, Lt. Gromadsky: “Sometimes they use this tactic – first they raise a white flag over their equipment, then they approach our positions. If we come up and take them as prisoners of war, so to speak, they’ll start opening fire on our troops.”

The position was attacked on Monday (or was it the day before, he wonders), two Russian tanks and an armored vehicle. “Don’t worry, we’re well defended,” he says, pointing to a stack of American-made Javelin anti-tank missiles. “Lockheed Martin, Texas” is written on its case. There is a pile of British NLAW missiles nearby. “Eliminates even the most advanced tanks,” promises its manufacturer Saab on its website.

It’s bitterly cold and two puppies are playing around Lt. Gromadsky’s feet. His shoes are a pair of white Puma trainers – “You have to be quick out here,” he says.

Ukrainians are improvising in this war. Your government has been accused of being ill-prepared and now there is a rush to get men to the front lines. The regular army is merged with civilian defense forces. At a gathering point on the eastern outskirts of town, I watch as buses arrive with hundreds of freshly equipped soldiers. “Where’s my body armor?” asks one. “You’ll get them up front,” yells an officer, and moments later they’re gone.

Some will join Lt. Hook up Gromadsky and team up with a medic named Reaper. “You’ve heard of the Grim Reaper, haven’t you?” he asks. He also commands this line of defenses on the outskirts of a village. Many of the houses there were destroyed or damaged by the Russian shelling.

How do the Russians fight? I ask. “They fight like stupid animals,” says Reaper. “They fight like it’s 1941 – they have no maneuverability, they just come to the front and that’s all. They have a lot of people, a lot of tanks, a lot of vehicles, but we’re fighting for our country and we’re doing it to protect our families. It doesn’t matter how they fight because we fight like lions and they won’t win.”

In the background is the field kitchen in a café. The army chef is reassuringly tall with a knitted hat on his head. He offers bowls of steaming hot borscht – “Drink sour cream with it,” he insists. There are mountains of cakes and cookies made for the troops by local factories.

I’m sitting next to a 30-year-old battalion commander, Sergey. “We see the enemy, we kill the enemy, there is no conversation, that’s it,” he says. He wants to know where I’m from. I tell him and he asks if it’s true that British volunteers came to fight for Ukraine. “What plane did you give us,” he says while finishing his borscht.

But in the east and south of Ukraine, Russia is on the rise. The Russian army has met more determined resistance than expected, but cities continue to fall. And for all their courage on the front lines, there is a realization that their skills on the ground will not be enough. Soldier after soldier says they need air defense, a no-fly zone.

I get into another armored vehicle that picked up cash from the city’s banks two weeks ago. She, too, was now put into the war effort. Driving through the city with its wide boulevards and beautiful buildings, we arrive at a Soviet-era apartment complex. And there I meet Eugene, a great Viking man, heavily tattooed with an orange beard.

“If Kharkiv falls, then all of Ukraine will fall,” says Eugene, 36. He is part of a reconnaissance team working near apartment blocks. Some of the apartments were hit directly and there is a car in the parking lot that was torn apart by another strike.

What is not there in Kharkiv is any surprise about the Russian attack. “Since 2014 we knew they were coming, maybe in a year, 10 years, maybe a thousand years, but we knew they were coming.”

At 04:55 in the morning of February 24, Eugene received a call from a friend telling him that the attack was about to begin. “Then I heard the rockets attacking our city,” he says. Like everyone else, he hasn’t been home since then.

Leaving the front lines to return to the heart of the city is almost like stepping into another world. The relentless Russian shelling has caused most of the 1.5 million residents to flee. Few neighborhoods have escaped damage of any kind. Early in the morning queues can still be seen in front of pharmacies, banks, supermarkets and gas stations as those left behind stock up on supplies. Huge logistical and humanitarian efforts are being made behind the scenes to keep Kharkiv running.

Before curfew, I make my way to the city’s number 4 hospital to see Dr. To meet Alexander Dukhovskyi, the head of pediatrics. Underneath his white hospital gown, he wears a Miami Beach 2015 t-shirt with the American flag on it. He hasn’t gone home in weeks.

He laughs when I say that Russia says it doesn’t target civilians. Then he silently leads me down corridor after corridor of victims of Russian attacks. They stand in the corridors because Russian shells have fallen nearby, so the patients in the sickrooms with the large windows are not safe. Most here were injured at home.

The children’s intensive care unit is located on the ground floor. The narrow windows catch the brilliant light from the snow outside, shimmering over the golden icons of saints above the nurses’ station.

Eight-year-old Dimitri is lying in a bed next to it. His toes are sticking out from under the covers and one hand, bruised and bloody, is also sticking out. His face is scratched and marked by hundreds of scars, his right eye is not fully closed. A few days ago, doctors removed a bullet between his skull and vertebrae.

It is hoped he will make a full recovery but at the moment he is in a sorry state, with tubes taking fluids from his small body into plastic bottles hanging under his bed. The thin blanket with tiny roses on it rises and falls with his mechanical breathing.

Vladimir Putin said he wanted to demilitarize Ukraine, instead creating a no man’s land. At night, the city is almost completely blacked out. A steady beating of Russian strikes falls through the night.

Kharkiv was once the capital of Ukraine – here are the parks, cathedrals, museums and theaters you would expect, as well as the Antonov Aircraft Factory and tank and turbine manufacturers.

The whole city is now a front line.

And that shouldn’t come as a surprise either. The Russian war playbook has been perfected in Syria over the past 10 years. Surround, besiege and terrorize the populace. In Ukraine, as in Syria, people are being driven from their hometowns by buses while Russian forces continue their advance.

But Ukraine is still resisting.

I meet an intelligence team traveling with anti-tank missiles ready in the back of their vehicles. Again I go to the outskirts of town and go through the front lines into a wasteland. Two gas stations on the outskirts of the city destroyed by shelling and gunfire.

About a dozen frozen Russian bodies lie in the snow. The men lie there like wax figures, some with outstretched hands, their matted beards still frozen in the cold.

One’s guts are spilled across the forecourt. There are blood-red footprints around his body. Their guns are gone and I ask Uta, one of the officers, what happens to the bodies.

“What do you think will happen, we’ll leave them to the dogs,” he says with a shrug.

And in this miserable place on the outskirts of Kharkiv, just two weeks ago inconspicuous for its everyday life, surrounded by frozen corpses, it’s as if time has stood still.