They are only two policemen to guard the monumental “Glory Memorial Complex” erected during the 1970s USSR in what is now a pleasant park north of Kharkiv. “That’s from us” one of them reacts when the muffled sound of explosions echoes in the distance.
Other explosions, closer and more muted, are the work of Russian artillery, while the Ukrainian army is engaged in fighting in the village of Tsirkouni, 8 km to the north. But their frequency has continued to decrease in recent days: the counter-attacks carried out for almost two weeks by the Ukrainian army in the Kharkiv region have borne fruit, gradually moving this city, 40 kilometers from the Russian border, away from howitzers of the Russian army.
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Despite several weeks of shelling which notably devastated the northern districts of the city, Moscow failed to seize this strategic city.
The weight of memory
May 8, 2022 does not yet have the scent of victory in Kharkiv, a city that was the scene during the Second World War of three separate battles and occupied by the German army from October 1941 to February 1943. The airborne warning sirens continue resound several times a day in a city where more than a million inhabitants lived before the war, and where almost all the shops, cafes and restaurants remain closed today.
None of the traditional commemorations will take place in Kharkiv which, like the rest of Ukraine, has been celebrating the end of the Second World War over two days for several years: 8 May has thus become the “Memorial Day” while May 9, the traditional day of remembrance in post-Soviet countries, remains the “Victory Day”.
At the Memorial of Glory, made of a long granite wall and an imposing statue representing the bereaved motherland, the two police officers present were thus ordered to prevent anyone from coming to lay wreaths or simply to gather. “No celebrations on Sunday and Monday, everyone just sits quietly at home,” confirms Igor Didenko, thundering adviser to the military governor of the region.
Facing the granite wall, where is written in thick letters “your exploits are immortal, your glory is immortal”, the official insists on an opinion now considered in Ukraine as a simple fact: eighty-three years after the start of the Second World War, the Russians are the new fascists. He points to a small crater, probably left in the granite by a mortar shell and which at the same time riddled the facade of the memorial with shrapnel. “This is how the Russians fight fascism, by destroying the monuments in memory of our dead”, release the man.
Same speech viscerally linking past and present in a metro station in the center of Kharkiv, where the mayor of the city, on May 8, organized the only ceremony. “Each year we visit the memorial to honor our veterans and our dead, killed in the defense of Kharkiv and Ukraine against fascist Germany,” states Igor Terekhov in front of a group of soldiers, journalists and municipal employees.
The relief of the counter-offensive
“This year, for the first time, we will not go because of Russian aggression, because our enemy bombed the memorial and it is still too dangerous to go there”, he adds. Behind him, a poster promises: “We have defeated fascism, we will defeat rachism! » – a portmanteau word combining “Russia” and “fascism” that has entered the common vocabulary of Ukrainians since the start of the war.
But if victory remains a vague prospect, the resumption of initiative by the Ukrainian army in the Kharkiv region could allow a first return to life. “The Ukrainian counter-offensive to the north and east of Kharkiv could in the coming days put the city beyond the reach of Russian artillery, as the Ukrainian operation is shifting from localized counter-attacks to a larger-scale counter-offensive,” thus noted on May 6 the American think tank Institute for the study of war.
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Not enough to change the ambient mood, assures in a park in the city center Oleg Soupereka, a 53-year-old soldier engaged in the special unit “Kraken”, formed by local members of the ultranationalist National Corps party. “Of course we are happy when we learn that a new village has been liberated, but we have never had the slightest doubt”, assures the soldier in fatigues, Kalashnikov resting on his thighs.
Difficult for this man who describes himself as a “product of the Soviet Union” also not to make the comparison with the Second World War, “the Great Patriotic War”, as it was called under the USSR. “We can say that this war is our great patriotic war, he confirms, and even Putin should be thanked for unifying Ukraine, now the east of the country hates the Russians even more than the west because that’s where the war happened! »