The firefighters were exhausted after spending three hours taming an inferno at a publishing house attacked by Russian missiles. They were covered in ash, soot, and blood from the bodies they had hauled from the flames. And they were not expecting much of a rest.
It was Thursday in Kharkiv. For almost a fortnight Russia had been piling pressure on the citizens of Ukraine’s second city, mounting a rapid offensive through the surrounding countryside while maintaining a daily bombardment of the city itself.
President Putin has claimed that his intention is not to capture Kharkiv but to create a buffer zone to protect Russia’s own border region.
But Russia still struck Kharkiv 15 times on Thursday, according to Oleh Syniehubov, head of Kharkiv Regional State Administration. The attacks began at around 10.30am, and one of the main targets was where the firefighters were now standing: the site of Vivat Publishing, one of the largest printing presses in the country.
At least seven people were killed and a further 21 injured, in part because Russia hit the location twice — once to destroy the factory and again to kill emergency workers when they rushed to the scene.
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Then yesterday at least two people were killed and more than 30 injured when a pair of guided missile strikes hit a hardware hypermarket in the city.
This “double-tap” method has emerged as one of Moscow’s most feared and despised tactics during the war. In March, President Zelensky of Ukraine said that a strike on a building in Odesa that killed 20 people was a double tap, and called it a “despicable act of cowardice”.
In April the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs noted that attacks on the wounded and those helping them breached international humanitarian law. It demanded an end to a “particularly troubling pattern” of recent double-tap attacks, which it called “cruel” and “unconscionable”.
At Vivat Publishing, one of the firefighters, Mikhail, 32, walked through the destruction with an oxygen tank strapped to his back. He said the publishing house was not a strategic military position. “People just worked here, a peaceful factory. It’s just a normal civilian factory,” he said.
Ash and smoke filled the air as emergency medics, police and firefighters picked through the wreckage. A lone medical stretcher sat near an ambulance, waiting for new casualties or bodies to be transported to nearby hospitals.
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On a cement platform a few metres from the factory, five firefighters sat covered in filth and sweat after emerging from inside. Some of the men sat silently, staring off into the distance as they drank water. Others joked with one another, smiling momentarily as they pulled themselves out of their reality.
Bogdan, 22, had cooling foam on his cheek to treat a burn he had received in the fire. The blood on his uniform was from the body of a 35-year-old man that he had extracted from the blaze. “He had injuries to his leg and back. He was very slippery with blood. It was hard to carry him,” Bogdan said.
He works 24-hour shifts every two days and is on standby for additional reinforcement calls. “I have fatigue,” he said.
Kharkiv is less than 30 miles from the Russian border, and now the front lines are drawing nearer. There were attacks in Kharkiv each day last week, and most strikes were followed by a second one shortly after. The onslaught ranged from unmanned aerial vehicles to S-300 missiles that pierced the city’s ill-equipped air defence system. Every time Russia strikes the city, firefighters rush to the scene, even though they know the likelihood of a second attack is high. On Friday, Zelensky visited the site where Vivat Publishing once stood. Afterwards he wrote on social media that tens of thousands of books, including ones for children, educational purposes and textbooks, had been destroyed in the blaze.
“You go out, and you’re afraid that, God forbid, there will be another hit,” said Andrey Dronov, a firefighter at Fire Station Number 9 in Kharkiv. “You understand that there are many of your people [colleagues] here. Everyone has families. Everyone has children. You worry about that.” The hardest part of the job though is “arriving at a scene where a missile or drone has hit and seeing that innocent civilians who were living and sleeping in their homes are now dead. It’s especially hard when there are child victims. It’s something you never want to see. It’s emotionally very challenging.”
Kharkiv’s firefighters wear their traditional gear on every callout. The uniform consists of a jacket, trousers, helmet and safety boots, and they carry an axe, rope and breathing apparatus. A wartime addition is a bulletproof vest, and the combined weight of everything is nearly 40kg. Although the vest can save lives — Dronov mentioned an incident when it stopped a piece of shrapnel from piercing a firefighter’s chest — it also makes it harder to move quickly.
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“Everyone has a monitor [radio] which tells us if there are quick targets on Kharkiv. Belgorod [the closest Russian city] is nearby — 40-50 seconds for a rocket to arrive. Very often, you go out after shelling, and they report again: target on Kharkiv,” he said.
“We look for the nearest simple shelter. We lie down and press ourselves to the ground. And we have body armour. But if the hit is close, it won’t save us.”
