My name is Volodymyr Chystilin. I am a journalist, public figure, activist, and a native of Kharkiv. I truly love our KharkivMusicFest[1], and since the very first festival, I’ve always been close to this team. I try to support them with media coverage to help attract more people.

 

I belong to the generation that grew up during perestroika, shaped in part by the films of Georgian directors, like Abuladze’s Repentance. I remember how deeply it affected me, and in 1989, when I was fifteen, I joined the barricades. We were activists of Rukh and other civic movements fighting for Ukraine’s independence. So in 1991, I consciously chose to study at the History Department of Kharkiv National University. I became a historian and political scientist, and even then, I understood that history was unfolding before our eyes — and we needed to learn it, and learn from it.

 

I became a Ukrainian patriot — but it didn’t happen overnight. It was a very slow process. I come from a Russian-speaking family and culture. We were raised on Bakhchanyan[2], Chichibabin[3], and other brilliant poets, including many Russian ones. But through the Ukrainian church, Ukrainian music, Ukrainian sports, and Ukrainian cinema, that transformation gradually happened.

 

Later I became a journalist. In the 1990s, I met Georgiy Gongadze[4]  in Kyiv. By the way, when I — a native of Kharkiv — went to conquer the capital, my Ukrainian wasn’t fluent enough. But by then, there was already a clear condition: to go on air, you had to speak Ukrainian very well. So I returned to Kharkiv and began learning the language. Sadly, Gongadze was murdered…

 

I was one of the activists of the Orange Revolution in 2004. Before the first round of the election[5], I was dismissed from my position as editor-in-chief of a news agency in Kharkiv, and from that point on, I joined the movement as a free activist, waving orange flags. For many years, we worked to promote the Ukrainian national idea.

 

In 2014, I was one of the first to come out to the Maidan in Kharkiv — and I accidentally became its voice. People knew I was a journalist, handed me a microphone and said: “You’ll be the one to lead this Maidan.” I called Serhiy Zhadan[6], our writer, but he happened to be in Paris at the time — so I had to take on that role myself. From the first to the very last day, I led the Kharkiv Euromaidan. And already in December 2013, we understood that war was coming. We even appealed to NATO — all of this is on video...

 

And then we became volunteers. In 2014, after the occupation of Crimea and Donbas, we started going there. I was more involved in cultural projects, making films. One of them, Heroes Don’t Die, is about three young men from Kharkiv who were killed during the Revolution of Dignity. The film was screened at international film festivals. We traveled with it all across the Kharkiv region — including places that are now frontlines: Kupiansk, Vovchansk, Izium.

 

We screened the film and talked to students and schoolchildren, explaining that the story of Maidan is not about the past — it’s about the future. We told them that great trials awaited us, that their generation would have to take up arms. And that’s exactly what happened.

 

For eight years, we tried to delay the war in Kharkiv. Today, those very boys and girls are fighting. They were 15 to 17 years old back then, and now they are 25 — they are the backbone of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. That’s the story.

 

My children — I have three — now live in Lviv. When the full-scale war began, they had to leave Kharkiv. To be honest, at home we used to speak Russian, but now we speak exclusively Ukrainian. Everyone comes to this in their own way.

 

For me, it started back in the 1990s, when I discovered Ukrainian culture and connected with the Ukrainian church — that was very important. I found myself in an environment of patriotic forces, though there weren’t many of them in Kharkiv, unfortunately. We organized different actions, gathered together — including through social media.

 

Many people in 2022 made a conscious decision to switch to the Ukrainian language. I can tell you a story about my mother. She’s 80 now. She came to Kharkiv from the Poltava region when she was 17 and didn’t know a single word of Russian. In the 1960s, Kharkiv was Russian-speaking, and she was constantly mocked — people told her she spoke “village language.” It was a huge trauma for her, and eventually she switched to Russian.

 

At school, I didn’t study Ukrainian — it was a deliberate choice by my mother. Back then, you could opt out of it. That’s how they broke her.

But when the full-scale war began in 2022, these elderly women sitting near the apartment entrances suddenly remembered that they were once Ukrainian-speaking girls. And, unexpectedly for themselves, they started speaking Ukrainian again. At the age of 80!

 

There is only one Ukrainian church in Kharkiv — all the other 50 are Moscow-affiliated. Even now, in the fourth year of the war… And still, the majority speak Russian. Though there has been a noticeable shift. People, especially the younger generation, are starting to speak Ukrainian. It’s good that this wave of Ukrainization is coming through radio stations, the media — thanks to decolonization policies, we are going through this process one way or another.

 

For many, the full-scale invasion came as a shock. By 7 a.m. on the first day, it was already impossible to leave Kharkiv — the roads were jammed. A huge number of people fled the city. Out of 1.5 million residents, only about 300,000 stayed. Those were the people who made the decision to defend the city.

 

It was a unique time: the streets were nearly empty, and whoever you saw — you knew they were like-minded. Some of the elderly stayed, either because they had nowhere to go or refused to leave. And yes, there were also people who waited for Russia — we have to acknowledge that too. But the majority were volunteers, activists, passionate citizens who decided to defend Kharkiv at any cost.

 

That atmosphere lasted until the so-called Kharkiv counteroffensive, when our Armed Forces pushed the enemy back from the city’s borders. Until then, Kharkiv was under constant daily shelling — artillery was flying in from Belgorod, and life here was extremely difficult.

 

Later, things became a bit easier, and people began returning. Today, more than a million people are back in the city. Kharkiv is changing. Around 400,000 internally displaced people have arrived from de-occupied or still-occupied territories. It’s clear that the mentality of the city will shift — new culture, new traditions, different clothing, another language.

 

Kharkiv used to be a student city — but now most of the youth are gone. There are almost no students or schoolchildren here; they’re all studying remotely, and that too affects the city’s overall atmosphere.

 

Our theaters and cultural institutions — the pride of Kharkiv, what gave the city its intellectual and cultural identity — are now closed. The city is going through a test of endurance.

 

Today, there are no more people living in illusions or deliberately trapping themselves in denial. But change is hard. Some people firmly believe that Russian culture is their culture, that the Moscow church is their church, that the Russian language is their language. They believe that “things are better over THERE” — and they’re still waiting. But there aren’t many of them.

 

When the Maidan began in 2014, we understood that about 30% of Kharkiv residents supported our aspirations for European integration — in other words, they stood for a modern, European Ukraine. Around 10% were pro-Russian loyalists, waiting for Putin and ready to greet him with bread and salt. And the remaining 60% were ordinary people — although this group is far from uniform.

 

It includes Soviet-era pensioners who don’t want any change; some youth who didn’t care about politics or what was going on around them — as long as there was a nightclub to go to. It includes people with hard lives: waking up early for work, raising kids. Our Barabashovo Market was the largest in Europe... These people worked hard to earn their daily bread, and everything else didn’t concern them.

 

We worked with those 60% — trying to bring them to our side. First, so they wouldn’t turn toward Russia. And second, so they wouldn’t surrender at a critical moment. The ten years since Maidan have borne fruit.

 

Because most of them — either they left, or they stayed, and they definitely won’t be waiting for Putin. And if needed — they will fight for Ukraine.
And they already are.

 

In addition to my degree in history, I also have a theological education and serve at the Church of St. John the Theologian. Our priest was the first clergyman of the Ukrainian Church in eastern Ukraine. On August 19, 1991 — the day of the coup in Moscow — the first Ukrainian-language liturgy was held here. At that moment, the entire Ukrainian community gathered around it. And so it remained — the only one of its kind. Volunteers here held funeral services for the heroes of the Heavenly Hundred. This church has become a spiritual fortress of Slobozhanshchyna.

 

When the authorities handed over the church to us in the 1990s, it was on the outskirts of the city and in terrible condition — 70% structurally unsound, without windows, without a roof, and with the bell tower completely destroyed. Clearly, they hoped it wouldn’t survive. But it did. And the restoration continues to this day — more than 30 years later. But the most important thing is that there are people, many of them, who are building a Ukrainian Kharkiv today.

 

The fact that nothing has changed in church policy here in the East is a real problem. We understand that the Moscow church is a fifth column. For decades, the “Russian world” was aggressively promoted here through the church.

 

Thanks to the support of journalists, human rights advocates, members of parliament, and the broader Ukrainian community I mentioned earlier, we managed to hold on to the church.

 

In September 2022, a missile strike hit nearby — half the windows were blown out and flew as far as 30 meters from the building. A wedding ceremony was taking place at that very moment. Once people recovered from the initial shock, they decided to continue — because love triumphs over death.

 

The rest — nearly fifty churches — belong to the Moscow Patriarchate. Some are even registered within hospitals. A new law is about to take effect, requiring these churches to declare their affiliation. But the Moscow church here is entangled with criminal networks; there is compromising material on every priest, and other pressures that keep them from leaving. That’s why an individual priest with his parish cannot simply switch. If they do join the Ukrainian Church, it would have to be all of them together.

 

Unfortunately, neither the regional nor city authorities support this transition. They’ve distanced themselves from it, not wanting religious conflict.

 

Kharkiv has always been a very tolerant city. There have never been interethnic, interreligious, or other major conflicts. People have always managed to find mutual understanding. The city has traditionally been home to many nationalities — Germans, Poles, Armenians, Jews, Russians, Ukrainians. And when Kharkiv became a major student center, even more newcomers arrived.

 

Why do people still go to the Moscow church? I think it’s mostly out of habit — they’ve simply gotten used to going there and don’t even stop to consider that it’s a church belonging to another state. It’s just easier for them that way.

 

But since 2022, the situation has begun to change. I know this well — I run a website and communicate actively through social media, and many people are now searching online for a Ukrainian church in Kharkiv — for example, to baptize their children. And this past Easter, they were with us.

 

People are returning to Kharkiv. The mayor, Ihor Terekhov, says the population is now around 1.2 to 1.3 million — and you can feel it, whether you're driving or walking through the city.

 

But the situation remains difficult. Beyond the constant shelling — which creates real security risks — there are serious economic challenges. Businesses are shutting down or relocating in large numbers to safer regions of Ukraine. This means lost jobs and lost tax revenue. Both large and small businesses currently see no future here.

 

For example, our local meat processing plant has been bombed three times, so they’ve decided to relocate. The bakery has also moved away.

 

Universities are operating at a fraction of their pre-war capacity. Students are no longer satisfied with distance learning — and they’re choosing to study in Kyiv, Odesa, or Lviv instead.

 

What will Kharkiv be like in the future?

 

There’s an idea that it could become a military fortress. There are many soldiers here, the enemy is right across the border — so we’ll fortify ourselves and hold the line.

But we want Kharkiv to be more than just a fortress. We want it to remain a cultural and intellectual center. A place filled with events — cultural, artistic. Where music is heard again, where theaters come back to life. We don’t want to merely exist or survive — we want to live a full life.

 

And that’s incredibly important, because if we don’t set such goals, we’ll gradually lose the potential we still have. If the youth leave, Kharkiv could become a city of pensioners and displaced people.

 

But this city has always been a birthplace of new meanings — from Skovoroda[7] to Zhadan, from the Kharkiv Romantics of the 19th century to the first university and the dissident movement, from our own Renaissance — Khvylovy[8], Johansen[9], Kurbas[10] — to the ultras who sang the most famous football chant.

 

All of that was born in Kharkiv.

 

It was here, in Kharkiv, that Mykola Mikhnovsky[11] first proclaimed the idea of an independent Ukraine. It was here, in the early 20th century, that the first Ukrainian political parties were born.

 

Kharkiv is also the city of Yurii Shevelov[12], — a figure of global stature.

 

Today, unfortunately, we are on pause — but we hope to bring back an active, vibrant life to this city. One of the building blocks in that larger reconstruction is KharkivMusicFest. It’s growing — world-class musicians are coming here and performing works that Kharkiv has never heard before. This is a festival of European caliber.

 

We also continue to make films — even though many of our actors are currently “underground,” what they stage and take on tour is of truly high artistic quality. The potential is here.

 

We are waiting for a just peace, for victory, and for the full restoration of Kharkiv. The motto of this year’s festival, "Codes of Revival," is a very fitting one.

 

We believe in Kharkiv’s future. And that belief is not just optimism — it is action. The cultural volunteerism that so many people are engaged in today is future-oriented. It may not yet be visible to the wider public — but it will bear fruit. Without a doubt.

Life goes on.

 

Even though air raid sirens constantly sound, drones fly overhead, and explosions happen from time to time. Sometimes it’s eerie, sometimes terrifying — people are dying. That’s the reality. Just nearby, there’s a military hospital — young men and women without arms, without legs…

 

We have no illusions that this will be easy or quick. It will be hard and long. But, as the saying goes, “the road is made by walking.”

 

And we knew that back in 2022, when many were saying the war would be over in two or three weeks. No — this is a long, grueling marathon, and we have to keep running. And we are.

 

Remember what Viktor Frankl[13], said — that the first to break are those who believed it would end quickly, then those who believed it would never end. And those who prevail are the ones who simply keep doing their work.

We have so many volunteers — the same ones we started with back in 2014. They support the military, weave camouflage nets, even take care of burying our fallen soldiers. They donate; they deliver everything needed to the front.

 

All for the victory.

 

And what does victory mean?

 

For me personally — as a historian — it means a final, strategic victory. And as a political scientist by training, it means the collapse of Putin’s empire — ideally, the complete disintegration of the Russian Federation into pieces.

 

The fall of this regime is our victory.

 

A ceasefire, some kind of truce where we partially lose territory — that’s just a pause.

 

As long as this regime remains in power, there is no true victory.

 

But you can lose a battle and still win the war. We’re playing the long game — and we understand that even now, when things may seem to be stabilizing, that could very well mean an escalation of the conflict. Not just for Ukraine, but for all of Europe.

 

Because the enemy is cunning. They have plans (and they’re not even hiding them) — plans for further conquest beyond Ukraine.

 

So we must prepare for new realities.

 

Ukraine today is the epicenter — and Kharkiv is a central city in this war. And that, by the way, has always been the case. It’s no coincidence that Lenin chose Kharkiv as the capital, not Kyiv or any other city.

 

Kharkiv was never granted the title Hero City in Soviet times — because it changed hands several times.

 

One of the largest battles of World War II took place here.

 

The city lay in ruins.

 

And in 2014, Putin — we saw those maps — named Kharkiv as the capital of the so-called Novorossiya.

 

We were participants and witnesses to those events. After the Heavenly Hundred were shot on February 20, on the 21st Yanukovych [14] and Azarov[15] came to Kharkiv. A congress was scheduled for February 22 at the Palace of Sports. Deputies from all levels of the southeast arrived, and there was a clear plan to tear the country apart — to separate the southeast from Kyiv.

 

Tanks in Belgorod were already on standby. Within hours, they were supposed to roll in.

 

But Kharkiv residents came out — and broke that scenario. It was thanks to the people of Kharkiv that Ukraine was saved at that moment, and the full-scale war was postponed by eight years. Very few people know that.

 

The first street battles in Kharkiv took place in March. Our so-called Russian Spring 2014 began on March 1 with the storming of the regional administration building. Between March and April, it was stormed three times. The same was happening in Donetsk and Luhansk. While the government was still holding cabinet meetings in Kyiv, here we already had burning SBU buildings, assaults on the regional administration, people being beaten, hundreds wounded.

 

Strelkov, Motorola — all those fighters were here.

 

And even today, for Putin, Kharkiv remains a key target.

 

Whoever controls Kharkiv controls Ukraine.

 

Whoever controls Ukraine controls Europe.

 

We feel this mission.

 

We understand that Kharkiv is not just one of Ukraine’s major cities — it is the epicenter of global events on the map of world history.

 

All of my relatives lived through the Holodomor.

 

There used to be many children in every family. My grandmother was the only one who survived in hers — all her brothers and sisters died.

 

I remember sometime around 1988, we started talking about the Holodomor. She suddenly lowered her voice to a whisper. I said, “Grandma, even Ogonyok magazine wrote about it, they’re talking about it on TV…”

 

But she was still afraid. She was terrified that everything could go back to the way it was. She feared the Communists might turn the wheel of history backward again.

 

Sadly, I never fully asked her all I wanted to. That generation is gone — but the trauma remains.

 

Here in Kharkiv, we always organize events to commemorate the Holodomor. On the city’s central square, there’s a tent called “Everything for Victory!” — they even made a film about it. That’s where we hold these memorial events.

 

It’s a deeply tragic chapter in our city’s history.

 

Les Kurbas once recalled walking down Sumska Street — our main avenue — and seeing bodies lying near the Berezil Theatre.

 

People from the region, especially from the very areas where fighting is happening today, would bring their children to the Kharkiv train station and leave them there. On the square outside the station, there was a mound of children — dying before everyone’s eyes.

 

It’s a horrific story. Many photographs have survived.

 

And I believe that fear was genetically passed down to the next generations — it’s still alive in us. Not everyone is ready to take to the barricades or go to the front to defend their homeland — because they’re afraid.

 

That trauma still surfaces today — from deep in the subconscious.

 

My family came from the Poltava region. But in Kharkiv region too, entire villages were placed on the “blacklist” (chorna doshka) during the Holodomor.

 

After the Orange Revolution, we created a website. The head of the regional administration, Arsen Avakov[16], provided funding, and a team of filmmakers came together to make the film Harvests (Zhniva).

 

They traveled throughout Kharkiv region, finding the last living witnesses — elderly women in the villages who still remembered those times. The director kept calling them every year — until one day she said: “That’s it. The last one is gone.”

 

Even in Kharkiv, the Holodomor was not fully acknowledged.

 

But right along the border between Kharkiv and Belgorod regions, there were NKVD blockade units stationed to prevent people from fleeing.

 

The well-known Kharkiv human rights advocate Yevhen Zakharov has done serious research on this subject — digging into the archives and collecting a significant body of documents from that time.

 

You see, on the one hand, Kharkiv is the Slovo Building — home to writers, our Ukrainian Renaissance. On the other — the Holodomor. They stand side by side. Just like today: some are playing music, watching films… and others are living through something entirely different.

 

But it's good that there is life in Kharkiv. There was a time when people shut down, stopped going outside, were afraid. Now they no longer react to air raid sirens — they stroll the streets, play football, go to cafés, enjoy the weather, kiss in public. And in my view, this is exactly what we are fighting for — a peaceful, European, modern Kharkiv. And we will keep fighting.

 

Sirens are constant here, unfortunately. It’s the music of war... By the way, we had a researcher visit — she was also from Canada — who was collecting recordings of air raid sirens. Turns out, they sound different in every city…

 

 

[1] KharkivMusicFest is an annual international classical music festival held in Kharkiv since 2018. It features not only concert performances but also an educational program.

 

[2] Vagrich Akopovich Bakhchanyan (1938, Kharkiv – 2009, New York) was a Ukrainian Soviet and American artist of Armenian descent, a conceptual poet, and a prominent figure of the underground culture. In 1974, he emigrated to New York, where he continued to work actively.

 

[3] Boris Oleksiyovych Chichibabin (his mother's surname; officially Polushin. 1923, Kremenchuk – 1994, Kharkiv) was a Ukrainian Soviet poet who wrote in Russian. He spent most of his life in Kharkiv.

 

[4] Georgiy (Giya) Ruslanovych Gongadze (1969–2000) was a Ukrainian public figure, opposition journalist, radio and TV host, film director, and translator of Georgian origin, known for his outspoken criticism of the government. He was posthumously awarded the title Hero of Ukraine in 2005. Gongadze was the founder and first editor-in-chief of the online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda. According to the most widely accepted version, his abduction and murder were orchestrated by high-ranking officials closely connected to then-President Leonid Kuchma.

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[5] The 2004 Ukrainian presidential election was held on October 31, November 21, and December 26 (the repeat second round). The two main contenders were the incumbent Prime Minister and head of government, Viktor Yanukovych, and the opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko. The election took place in an extremely tense political climate, marked by accusations of media bias, voter intimidation, and the poisoning of candidate Yushchenko. As a result of the repeat second-round vote, Yushchenko emerged as the winner.

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[6] Serhiy Viktorovych Zhadan (born 1974) is a Ukrainian writer, translator, public figure, and frontman of the bands Zhadan and the Dogs and The Mannerheim Line. He lives and works in Kharkiv.

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[7] Hryhorii Savych Skovoroda (1722–1794) was a Ukrainian mystic philosopher, theologian, poet, and educator. He died and was buried in the Kharkiv region — in what is now the village of Skovorodynivka, Zolochiv district.

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[8]Mykola Khvylovy (real name: Mykola Hryhorovych Fitiliov; 1893, Trostianets, Kharkiv Governorate – 1933, Kharkiv) was a Ukrainian prose writer, poet, publicist, and political activist. He was the ideological author of the slogan “Away from Moscow!” In protest against the beginning of mass repressions targeting the Ukrainian cultural intelligentsia, he took his own life.

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[9] Maik Yohansen (Mykhailo Hervasiyovych Yohansen; 1895, Kharkiv – 1937, Kyiv) was a Ukrainian poet, prose writer, translator, critic, linguist, and screenwriter. He was one of the founders of the literary organization VAPLITE (Free Academy of Proletarian Literature). He became a victim of Stalinist repressions.

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[10] Les Kurbas (Oleksandr-Zenon Stepanovych Kurbas; 1887–1937) was a Ukrainian theater director, actor, theater theorist, playwright, publicist, and translator. He was the founder of the Berezil Theater in Kharkiv. Kurbas was repressed and executed during the Stalinist purges in the Sandarmokh forest.

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[11] Mykola Ivanovych Mikhnovsky (1873–1924) was a Ukrainian political and public figure of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A lawyer, publicist, and ideologist of Ukrainian independence, he was an active participant in the Ukrainian People’s Republic and a key organizer of the Ukrainian military. He advocated for the de-Russification of Ukraine and for an autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church. In 1902, he founded the Ukrainian People's Party in Kharkiv, which declared the struggle for Ukraine’s independence as its primary goal.

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[12] Yurii Volodymyrovych Shevelov (born Schneider; pen name: Sherekh; 1908, Kharkiv – 2002, New York) was a Ukrainian Slavic linguist of German descent, a historian of Ukrainian literature, a literary and theater critic, and an active participant in the scholarly and cultural life of the Ukrainian diaspora.

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[13] "The first to break were those who believed it would all be over soon. Then those who believed it would never end. The ones who survived were those who focused on their actions, without expectations about what might or might not happen." This quote is attributed to Viktor Frankl, the renowned Austrian psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor, who endured Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

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[14] Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych (born 1950) is a former Ukrainian political and state figure who served as the 4th President of Ukraine (2010–2014). He was twice Prime Minister of Ukraine (2002–2005, 2006–2007). In 2015, he was stripped of the title of President and later found guilty of high treason, receiving a prison sentence in absentia.

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[15] Mykola Yanovych Azarov (born Pakhlo; b. 1947) is a former Ukrainian pro-Russian political and state figure. He served as Prime Minister of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014. Of Russian origin, Azarov is considered a collaborator with the Russian regime.

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[16]Arsen Borysovych Avakov (born 1964) is a Ukrainian political and public figure of Armenian descent. He served as Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs from 2014 to 2021 and was the Head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration from 2005 to 2010.