As Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkov, was hit by a wave of Russian air and missile attacks Tuesday morning, 29-year-old Taras Kovalchuk dared to take his dog Yoko for a short walk.
Shortly after leaving his apartment in the city’s main Freedom Square, his phone rang as a series of signals from local authorities warned of impending airstrikes.
A friend sent him a message asking if he was okay, and a press release informed him that a rocket had hit the square.
“While the rocket destroyed my apartment, I was very convinced that I would stay in Kharkov,” he told Al Jazeera.
Kovalchuk returned to his apartment, opposite the district administration building, which was hit by a Russian military attack shortly after sunrise, to a scene of devastation.
Footage from a closed-air television shows a ball of fire engulfing the street in front of the Soviet-era building. An ambulance official said the bodies of at least six people had been removed from the rubble and at least 20 others injured.
It is not immediately clear what kind of weapons were used or how many people were killed. Ukrainian authorities say at least 11 people have been killed. President Vladimir Zelensky said there were dozens of victims and accused Russia of war crimes.
“What I saw was the craziest thing in my life,” Kovalchuk said. “I could not imagine that one human being could behave like that with another human being.
Central Café, the local café where he spends many mornings over the years, was destroyed by the blast. Upstairs, the windows in his apartment had shattered and the doors slammed shut. Glass and debris covered the floor, and the furniture lay upside down.
Kovalchuk snatched the evacuation bag he had prepared in case of an emergency when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on Thursday and took a 40-minute walk to the station, navigating a devastated city he barely recognized amid the constant sound of shelling.
Tuesday marked the first time the Russian military has hit the center of Ukraine’s second-largest city, with a population of 1.4 million, mostly Russian-speaking. Residential neighborhoods have been shelled for several days.
About 87 residential buildings in Kharkiv have been damaged, and several parts of Kharkiv no longer have water, electricity or heating, Mayor Igor Terekhov told Ukrainian television.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, said “there are virtually no areas left in Kharkiv where an artillery shell has not yet struck.”
The Russian military has denied attacking civilian targets, despite reports of shelling of residential buildings, schools and hospitals. It says it focuses only on Ukraine’s military infrastructure, air defense and air force with high-precision weapons.
Kharkov has resisted Moscow’s offensive, with Ukrainian forces capturing a unit of Russian troops that entered the city over the weekend.
Beginning on Monday, Russian forces fired rockets at residential neighborhoods, killing at least 10 civilians, including three children, and wounding at least 40, according to local authorities.
Terekhov, the mayor of Kharkiv, said one in four people in the city has relatives living on the other side of the border. “But the city’s attitude towards Russia today is completely different from what it was before,” he said in an online video statement.
“We never expected this to happen: total destruction, destruction, genocide against the Ukrainian people – this is unforgivable.
Clashes erupted on Wednesday after Russian paratroopers landed in Kharkov, the Ukrainian army said.
Kovalchuk fled the city and took refuge in a friend’s house. Just last week, he was writing for a digital magazine and traveling. Now he could barely contain the anger that the invasion of his homeland and the destruction of his city had aroused in him.
“We can’t call [Russians] “People are not behaving like civilians,” he said. “The world needs to stop Russia now.”