Kharkiv War Diary, Part 3/22

October 8, 2022

One of the congratulations for Putin on his birthday we experienced firsthand. Several Russian missiles were fired in the north shortly after midnight, hitting central Kharkiv. Judging by the sounds, they were a bit different this time. Actually, I couldn’t count how many explosions I heard. There seemed to be dozens, following each other in slow succession. The explosions seemed endless. But then there was another loud bang and everything went quiet.

A few hours later we already knew that rockets had hit «a medical facility and a non-residential building in the center». In the nonresidential building, whatever that means, there were secondary explosions and that was why we had heard so many detonations.

I don’t think we’ll be learning the truth of what actually blew up any time soon. There was probably ammunition in the building hit by the rockets, and there was a spy or traitor who informed the enemy about it, so Putin should be satisfied.

But the next congratulations to him were of a completely different nature.

The first thing I read online in the morning was news of an explosion that partially destroyed the Kerch Bridge, which connects mainland Russia to the Crimean peninsula. Olexi Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, even posted the famous video of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to John F. Kennedy, with the Crimean Bridge in the background – a exquisite insult.

We had been waiting for this for months. All military experts had been saying all along that Carthage, i.e. the Crimean Bridge, had to be destroyed. The first feeling was disbelief. In the early hours of the morning I watched video footage of the tanker freight train burning on the bridge, then many short videos uploaded by witnesses, and I still couldn’t believe my eyes.

Of course, there were other congratulations and gifts for Putin. Belarusian dictator Lukashenko gave Putin a tractor. A Central Asian dictator had a beautiful yellow pyramid made of honeydew melons and a green pyramid made of watermelons built for Putin. He placed them both on a carpet made of fruit.

A grandma from the Russian nowhere masochistically wished Putin long years of life and the presidency. She spoke from a crumbling house with peeling plaster on the walls and no doors or windows. The yard was littered with rubbish and the neighborhood where she lived looked almost as desolate as bombed Mariupol, even though she hadn’t been at war for almost eighty years.

Pro-Ukraine activists from Batumi, Georgia, presented Putin with a boarding pass for a flight from Moscow to The Hague. But the burning Crimean Bridge was by far the best gift of all.

Russia blames “Ukrainian vandals” for blowing up the bridge. However, the truck that was detonated was en route from Russia. Some say he loaded Iranian Shahed-136 drones, but no one knows if that’s true. He could also have had something else with him. Others believe that it was the Russian military who wanted to rip off the Russian FSB with the demolition. Or the other way around. However, the most important symbol of the Putin era, the thing that was libidinally possessed by Putin, has partially collapsed.

Oddly enough, nobody seems to care about the fate of the unfortunate truck driver. Who was he: a collateral victim, a useful idiot, or a hero on a suicidal mission? We won’t know until the war is over.

The autumn morning is warm and beautiful. I walk down the street. Something has changed and the air seems to be charged with new hope. It is likely that this war, which previously seemed endless, is nearing its end. People are smiling, many of them discussing the news.

A man and a woman come towards me on the pavement. The woman holds the hand of a little boy. The two talk about Putin and the Crimean Bridge. They look excited, but the boy is obviously bored.

“Let’s go over and collect some autumn leaves,” he suggests.

“We’re discussing important things right now,” the father says sternly, but the boy pulls the mother’s hand and she nods. They cross the street and start picking beautiful maple leaves from the grass. They forget about the last birthday of the Kremlin dwarf and what happened to the Crimean bridge.

To person

PD

Sergei Gerasimov – What is the war?

Of the war diaries written after the February 24 Russian invasion of Ukraine, those of Sergei Vladimirovich Gerasimov are among the most disturbing and touching. They combine the power of observation and knowledge of human nature, empathy and imagination, a sense of the absurd and inquiring intelligence. Gerasimov was born in Kharkiv in 1964. He studied psychology and later wrote a psychology textbook for schools and scientific articles on cognitive activity. His literary ambitions have so far been science fiction and poetry. Gerasimov and his wife live in the center of Kharkiv in an apartment on the third floor of a high-rise building. The NZZ published 71 “Notes from the War” in the spring and 69 in the summer. The first part is now available as a book on DTV under the title «Feuerpanorama». Of course, the author does not run out of material. – Here is the 22nd contribution of the third part.

Translated from the English by Andreas Breitenstein.