Boom. And boom again, so much louder. It’s 1 p.m., Sunday 1is September, children devour their cotton candy or jump on the trampoline reserved for them every weekend in the large covered market of Kharkiv, Barabashovo. A siren barely has time to howl when two enormous explosions suddenly wake up alleys, signs, saleswomen and strollers. Everyone throws themselves down the stairs of the metro, at the entrance to the market, the time to understand that the strikes have struck just a little further away.
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Two ballistic missiles have just fallen, not on the market, but on the Chudho shopping mall, at a metro station, taking by surprise the families who came to do their shopping in this mall open until 11 p.m., 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 Kharkovians. And it is true: the second city of Ukraine is only 25 km from the border and 70 km from the Russian city of Belgorod, where the shots were fired on Sunday, and the alerts 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 it ” raised “the apartments that are starting to “to pitch”… In front of the Chudho supermarket, the glass windows of the Akademika-Pavlova metro station were shattered, and even the small grocery store in a corridor was damaged. For meters and meters around, the ground is covered with shards and bits of missiles, and on one side of the Sports Palace, chestnut shells blown away by the blast.
It was something for the city, the Kharkiv Sports Palace. A 4,000-seat complex decorated with brutalist frescoes, with inside a hockey rink, a basketball court, fighting and fitness rooms, a few shops like a hairdresser’s and, outside, on an esplanade, a huge climbing wall. In the grass all around, the holds that were used for climbing lie, unhooked and pulverized by the explosion.
Russian technique
“The Palace has also been used as a food distribution centre for the past year.”, explains, in his Nike-branded vest, a certain Evgeni, a former policeman and local kid. Also a regular at the Palais dumbbell workouts, as his biceps testify. “It hosts children’s Christmas parties and concerts for a long time,” he continues. ” Quickly “he takes us, slaloming between the emergency vans, to the other side of the building, devastated to the foot of a statue. It is Vladimir Vysotsky, the famous Moscow singer, husband of the actress Marina Vlady. “He came to sing here in the late 1970s, we built him a monument”remembers Evgeny. Cast in bronze, the musician and his guitar withstood the explosion of the 1is september.
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