Kharkiv War Diary, Part 3/59

Sergei Gerasimov is holding out in Kharkiv. In his war diary, the Ukrainian writer reports on the horrible and absurd everyday life in a city that is still being shelled.

Destroyed buildings in Kharkiv, May 2022.

John Moore/Getty

November 17, 2022

Ukrainian journalists are only too happy to use photos of Putin. No matter which news article I read, the probability that Putin’s face will appear in it is at least fifty percent. Because I follow the news very closely, I have to look at dozens or even hundreds of Putin’s faces every day. It’s starting to make me nauseous, almost physically nauseous.

Of course, almost all Ukrainian news these days is about the war, and the demon in the Kremlin with the glowing eyes is the driving force behind this war, so Putin’s face always makes a good visual. But there is also such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Journalists usually use pictures of Putin that are as ugly as possible for illustration purposes. Here his face always appears contorted with malice, frustration and anger, with anger evident or disguised, with hatred or with nauseous language such as the cry “Russia! Russia! Russia!”.

When the demon chants: «Russia! Russia! Russia!” his face imprints in a particularly repulsive way. His eyes are crocodile-vacant and he tries to open his mouth as wide as crocodiles can, but fails, distorting his face even more.

Whenever I come across something particularly terrible in Kharkiv, I get this “Russia! Russia! Russia!” to mind.

I’m walking around the high, eight-story building of the polyclinic on Metrobudivnikiv Street. Its walls are pierced by several projectiles. Through the holes in the walls, some doctor’s rooms, rooms with white tiles and the stairwell can be seen inside. Of course, not a single window is left in its entirety. Luckily nothing burned here.

As I continue walking along Metrobudivnikiv Street, I stop in amazement in front of house number 9. A couple of stray cats immediately rush towards me and start rubbing against my legs. There are so many strays here. Their masters and mistresses didn’t have time to take their pets with them when they left town.

“This is the most damaged building in Kharkiv I’ve seen so far,” I say to a man hurrying down the street laden with heavy packages of plastic.

He agrees. He stops and tells how he and his family fled from here on one of the first days of the war.

“Do people still live here?” I ask him.

“No, of course not,” he says.

“How exactly did that happen?” I ask.

“It was a large, highly explosive bomb,” he says. “She burned everything.”

“If it was a bomb,” I ask, “how is it possible that the roof remained intact?”

But the man has no answer. All he remembers is a gigantic explosion that brought down the nine stories of the building.

The roof looks almost intact, which is really strange. I step closer to the vertical crack carved in the wall of the tall building and stare at the warped and torn concrete slabs hanging over my head. Each of them was once the top or bottom of something. I feel like I’m floating over a deep ravine. The sheer power of what has happened here makes me hold my breath. So much emptiness that was once filled with life.

I notice a hole under the roof. Probably the rocket or artillery shell entered there in an oblique trajectory and then exploded inside, creating a deep crater three apartments wide. Then the gas in the house exploded and the fire spread to a large part of the building.

I still can’t understand what destroyed the rest of the floors down to the first floor.

“This part of the building will have to be demolished,” says the man. “There is no way to restore it.”

I look at the front door, which is half open. Next to it is an inscription: «Residents». And the numbers of several apartments. Some people probably still live here.

“Kharkiv is the Ukraine” is sprayed on the wall a little further back.

The yard is littered with concrete rubble.

“For many months nobody took away the garbage,” says the man. “But recently they cleaned everything up.”

I’m still looking at the cavity where the nine apartments used to be stacked on top of each other. It’s a mesmerizing sight. No photograph can capture this tremendous tragic sense of loss. All that remains of the rooms is a vertical tunnel, smeared with soot inside. It resembles a silo from which a giant ballistic missile has been launched. The only thing that reminds us that people lived and happily lived here are ceramic tiles on the second floor.

But also some barely recognizable skeletons of air conditioners hanging under the roof bear witness to this.

“Russia! Russia! Russia!” Putin keeps screaming in my head. Like a mad parrot rotting in hell.

To person

Sergei Gerasimov - What is the war?

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 59th contribution of the third part.

Translated from the English by Andreas Breitenstein.

Series: «War Diary from Kharkiv»

After a break, the Ukrainian writer Sergei Gerasimov has continued his war diary. From the beginning of the fighting, he reported on the horrors and absurdities of everyday life in the center of his hometown of Kharkiv, which is still being shelled.

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