Boom. And boom again, much louder. It’s 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, the 1st.Ahem In September, children are devouring their candy floss or jumping on the trampoline reserved for them every weekend at the large covered market in Kharkiv, in Barabashovo. A siren barely has time to sound when two huge explosions suddenly awaken the corridors, shops, vendors and passers-by. Everyone runs down the stairs from the metro to the entrance of the market, taking their time to understand that the strikes have broken out a little further away.
Two ballistic missiles have just fallen, not on the market, but on the Chudho shopping centre, at a metro station, taking by surprise the families who came to do their shopping in this shopping centre open until 11 pm, seven days a week. “Here, when you hear the siren, the missile has already fallen”This is the joke, full of black humor, of the inhabitants of Kharkiv. And it is true: Ukraine’s second city is only 25 km from the border and 70 km from the from the Russian city of Belgorod, where the shots came from on Sunday, and the warnings are of little use.
Six more of the eight missiles fired by the enemy destroyed the Kharkiv Sports Palace on Sunday, in another district, Nemyshlianskyi, more central. And, each time, the same stories from neighbors or survivors: a blast so powerful that ” increase “the apartments that are starting to “launch”… Opposite the Chudho supermarket, the windows of the Akademika-Pavlova metro station were shattered, and even the small grocery store in one of the corridors was damaged. For metres and metres around, the ground is covered with fragments and pieces of missiles, and on one side of the Sports Palace, with chestnut bugs torn off by the explosion.
It was a city-specific sight, the Kharkiv Sports Palace. A 4,000-seat complex decorated with brutalist frescoes, with an indoor hockey rink, a basketball court, wrestling and fitness rooms, a few shops such as a hairdresser’s, and outside on an esplanade, a huge climbing wall. On the surrounding grass, the climbing handles lie loose and pulverized by the explosion.
Russian technique
“The Palace also served, for a year, as a distribution center for food products”, explains, wearing a Nike T-shirt, a certain Evgeni, a former policeman and local boy. He is also a regular at the Palais dumbbell workouts, as his biceps attest. “Children’s Christmas parties are held here and concerts have been held here for a long time.” he continues. ” Quickly “He takes us, slaloming between emergency vans, to the other side of the building, devastated to the foot of a statue. This is Vladimir Vissotsky, the famous Moscow singer, husband of the actress Marina Vlady. “He came to sing here in the late 70s, we built a monument for him”Evgeni recalls. Cast in bronze, the musician and his guitar withstood the explosion of 1Ahem September.
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