Dracoa the ferret and the red-haired cat named Cat have struck an uneasy truce. And while the dog on the other side of the platform is still barking at them both, the people and their pets living in this corner of the Kharkiv metro station have got used to each other after more than a month.
On one side of the platform, Tetiana Kapustynska has hung balloons for her 24th birthday on the pillar behind which she sleeps. “The day before I cried because I didn’t know what it was going to be like, but in the end people got together and celebrated with me,” she said.
“The biggest problem was the champagne, I couldn’t find a bottle anywhere,” she added with a grin while preparing instant coffee for visitors with water in a pot. “Cake wasn’t such a problem. You can still get it in stores.”
Dasha with her ferret Dracoa in the Kharkiv metro. Photo: Dmytro Frantsev/The Guardian
Kapustynska, who is a maths and physics teacher, transformed the subway station’s operations room into a hybrid child care facility and school for the children living in the underground chamber. For her birthday, they made decorations and organized flowers.
Less than a month ago she had been trying to choose a bar or restaurant for a celebration. But since the war began, bombs, shells and rockets have devastated Kharkiv’s city center and residential areas, killing hundreds of civilians in what is perhaps the war’s most intense offensive outside the besieged port city of Mariupol.
In response, life has largely moved indoors and underground, with thousands of people taking refuge in Soviet-era train stations. These were designed during the Cold War to protect the city’s residents from a western attack, but now the bunkers protect civilians from the Russians.
“I don’t go out much; it’s scary,” said Denis Kapustynskyi, 19, Tetiana’s brother. He lived with his mother in Saltivka, a northern suburb that had been reduced to a burned-out wasteland by some of the war’s heaviest shelling.
He doesn’t even know if they still have a house, having fled at the beginning of the war with little more than their clothes on their backs. “On the first day of the war, the sounds of the explosions were very loud. They are already shelling blocks of flats. We got dressed, got our documents and left,” he said.
Some still risk the daytime light, fresh air, shopping, and Tetiana goes to feed and play with her dog, who is too big to be taken to the subway station — though every trip is above ground is potentially deadly.
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