The northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv was hit by multiple Russian strikes on Tuesday night, with people on the ground sharing reports and videos of multiple explosions across the city.
Explosions reported in #Zaporizhzhya and #Kharkiv. Video footage is of the missile impacts in Kharkiv this morning. #StopRussiaNOW #StandWithUkraine #ArmUkraineNow pic.twitter.com/oBN3OrnDWE
— Mveiga Aldemira (@AldemiraVeiga) August 3, 2022
One video clip shared on Twitter, which included audio, showed a large blast in the distance. The recording appears to show rural farmland in the foreground and explosions in the distance. Multiple successive and large explosions can be seen and heard in the video.
Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov confirmed the strikes on social media, revealing that two explosions occurred at 03:55 and 03:56 Ukraine time.
“At 03:55 and at 03:56 Kharkiv heard two explosions. In one case arrived in the Kholodnogorsk district of the city. Preliminarily there were no casualties and fire. On the second location of the hit firefighters clarify the information,” the mayor said.
“Two powerful explosions sounded in Kharkiv, an air alarm was declared in the city and region,” the mayor also said.
Independent Ukrainian news outlet, The Kyiv Independent, reported that one of the explosions occurred in the Kholodnohirskyi District of the city.
“No casualties or damage have been reported,” the outlet noted.
Local news reports suggested that the second explosion struck an infrastructure facility in the Novobavarsky district of the city, but that there were no casualties or fire reported.
“Under Constant Russian Attacks”
Analyst Maria Avdeeva, research director for the non-partisan think tank European Expert Association, also shared video footage of Ukrainian emergency service workers on the streets of Kharkiv and described how the city had been “torn apart by explosions, sirens and flashing lights.”
Emptiness and darkness of night Kharkiv streets is torn apart by explosions, sirens and flashing lights. City has been under constant Russian attacks for 160 days. pic.twitter.com/vu1dZDXvI9
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) August 2, 2022
“City has been under constant Russian attacks for 160 days,” Avdeeva added.
The firefighters in the video were responding to similar strikes in the city in recent days, and additional photographs shared online showed how civilian infrastructure had been torn apart by Russian missiles.
As Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv was one of Russia’s first targets during the early days of the invasion. After abandoning efforts in Kyiv and Kharkiv early on, however, Russian forces have re-focused their efforts on the city after making slow and steady gains in neighboring Luhansk Oblast.
On June 19, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister revealed a heightened risk in Kharkiv and described how Russian troops were attempting to make it a “frontline city.”
After making gains in Luhansk, Russian forces appear dead-set on making fresh advances in regions of Ukraine that were previously abandoned.
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
