Vlad ran a technology company in Kharkov before the war. When the invasion began, he enrolled in territorial defenses and now his house is completely destroyed by a missile that almost killed him, in one of the six times he has nearly died in 43 days.
As soon as we arrive in Kharkiv, a city just 50 kilometers from the Russian border that has been under constant attack since the beginning of the war, this 43-year-old Ukrainian, big as a truck, welcomes us with a wide smile at a petrol station on the outskirts.
“When you're alive, everything is fine.” With that attitude, Vladislav Malishev now faces life. Perhaps because, he counts, he has already seen death up close six times.
The first was on a mission with the territorial defenses, when an anti-tank mortar fell next to it. “We managed to escape.”
The second when he was driving around the city with his electric car, which saved him. A projectile was directed at the vehicle but, when no heat was detected, it went up above the front windshield.
During his time in the territorial defenses, which he had to leave a week ago after his third “fright”, Vlad lived in his house in the village of Derhachi, a small residential town fifteen kilometers northwest of Kharkiv, now turned into the front line of combat and to which he takes us on his off-road vehicle.
The streets are deserted and there are intermittent pops in the area. The town hall building has been bombed three times in recent days and is practically rubble. The situation has reached such an extent that the Army has decided to evacuate the village and this Thursday Vlad is helping to do so.
Next to the skeleton of the town hall kept by some soldiers, Ludmila, 69, walks shrunk with a loaf of bread in her hand. He heads to the empty school, where he used to work as a janitor, to see how the classrooms are going.
At home she left her six-year-old grandson with her father. “It's very difficult to explain to him what is going on. To calm him down, I tell him that the house was built by my father, which is made of wood and brick and is impossible to destroy. He is afraid, but I hold him tight and try to reassure him.”
The last two nights, Ludmila says, were especially hard. “From nine in the evening until three in the morning, bombs fell non-stop.”
RUSSIA'S NEXT GOAL?
Russian troops are encircling the entire northern, northeastern and northwestern part of the city, which just faces the Russian border, and the Ukrainian government warns that Kharkiv, the country's second city, could be the next target when they finish rearming and refueling.
Derhachi is right in that area and that is where Vlad slept until a week ago with fifteen neighbors from four families in his basement, barely ten square meters. His wife and children fled to Poland at the beginning of the invasion.
He, along with another man, spent the nights on the ground floor because they couldn't fit underground, until a shell fell into the house at midnight. Vlad suffered a brain contusion and was hospitalized for a few days. His neighbor was saved by the refrigerator, which fell on him like a shield.
Opposite the villa is her 70-year-old neighbor Holina, who asks her to evacuate her daughter with her three grandchildren, one of them with cerebral palsy. “I am very afraid, I pray every day. Yesterday the neighbors left,” he says, pointing to the house next to Vlad's. Then they were bombed from two to five in the morning. “It was horrible.” Although Holina continues to take care of her flowers: “What am I going to do”.
In Derhachi, Vlad accompanies us to a checkpoint where Ukrainian soldiers come face to face with the Russians. A soldier, who does not want to give his name, explains that three days earlier they made a raid in plain clothes and opened fire. They managed to push them back. “At night it's the worst,” he says.
Crossed the post, a factory still smoking and mines prepared on the sides of the road. Beyond, a few kilometers away, Russian forces, and Vlad drives with the windows open. In case something explodes and the shock wave breaks the windows and to hear possible drones.
NOR DO SIRENS SOUND
After seeing the face of death that third time at home, Vlad had to leave the militias to recover from the bruises and has been in his brother's flat in Kharkov for a few days. Since then three more mines have exploded nearby.
With Pink Floyd in the background, he now drives his SUV dodging artillery holes in the city streets, where 16,000 infrastructures have been destroyed, 1,300 of them residential buildings. Practically two out of ten. He suffers so many attacks that all day long the sirens don't sound.
The inhabitants of Kharkiv live in basements, some in their homes and on the subway, and go out to the streets to buy food or receive it from humanitarian aid that reaches the city, immune to explosions. Many continue to leave the city, even more after the Ukrainian Government has recommended leaving the region in the face of Russian rearmament.
From time to time, Vlad, who does not plan to leave Kharkiv and hopes to return to the fight soon, turns off the music and hears: “That was a mortar of 82.” His life of five-star hotels, work trips and office is over. “Now a day is like a week.”
(with information from EFE)
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