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The constant shelling continues. It's heavy and it's continuous. There's even people living inside the parked metro train. So, she's walking like 15 kilometers to get to other parts of Kharkiv through these tunnels, check it out. Somebody said that when they go outside, they feel like they're playing lottery with their life. Unexploded -- here, destroyed buildings everywhere, the air raid sirens going off in the background. I got behind the doors, my eyes got covered.
The third and the fourth -- came and hit hard. You can see just walking past places that were --, if I was standing there a few hours ago, who knows what would have happened. Vladimir Putin has launched a major -- operation again. Today this building was --. Sounds you can hear behind us is Russian -- hitting the city. Just wanted to destroy this civilization. - This is my house. - This is your house? So, what you're saying is this -- is more scary than World -- II?
Every man will fight. Bits of --. -- smell. - This is Russian world. - Destruction everywhere. When they go outside, they feel like they're playing lottery with their life. You and her heart are near. Unexploded -- here, destroyed buildings everywhere, the air raid sirens going off in the background. This one's completely burnt out. It's probably one of the -- cities in the world at the moment. Let's see how this goes.
It's really quite hard for me to convey how many -- holes are here. Now we've been told to stay right here because they expect that a Russian counter --. Coming to you from Kyiv train station. About to get a sleeper train to Kharkiv. Kharkiv is a city that's been absolutely decimated. Population about 1.4 million before the --, but now half the population has actually left the city. It's under constant --.
There was an attack today, apparently at night it can get quite grim with the attacks. If you're wondering if I'm just going into this with blind optimism, I've got the necessary protective equipment. Not gonna lie, quite nervous, it's a helmet and flak jacket armor. I'm meeting up with a friend soon who's actually been to Kharkiv twice during the --. He's a -- journalist, so I do have the right guidance and things, but of course, I am quite nervous. It's going to be an active -- zone.
It is being -- every day. Let's go into this train station, we'll get there in the morning. Luckily, the train lines haven't been -- so much yet, but some of the train stations have been. Fortunately, unlike the roads, you can still get around the country at the moment by the train lines, so fingers crossed it stays that way. Let's see how this goes.
Okay, so we've made it on the train. We're here with Tom and Natalie. Tom, what can we expect to see in Kharkiv today? A lot of blown up buildings. I've been in Kharkiv twice so far, and it's probably one of the most -- cities in the world at the moment. About every half hour or so, you can just hear an -- barrage. When I was last there at about 6 am I woke up, our windows were vibrating, the shelling was so close. Walking around the streets, there's almost no one there, you will occasionally find a couple of police or maybe a few elderly people who haven't left, but the vast majority of people,
they either live in their own personal shelters or they live in the metro station. The metro stations are crammed, each of them have hundreds and hundreds of people down there. So all the lights on this train have to be switched off by eleven, to hide from potential bombings, so they can't target the train. They're dimmed down now, but they're going to be completely shut off, and then we'll be going through the night in a completely dark train, it's pretty wild. So, we'll see you when we get to Kharkiv in the morning.
Where are we heading now, Tom? So, we're heading to Heroiv Pratsi, it's a metro station in the Saltivka district of Kharkiv, it's the place that's closest to the Russian positions. Last time I was there, they said that Russian -- formations were about 10 kilometers away, so it's one of the most heavily shelled and -- areas in the entire city. So, there's potential for shelling, like at any moment? More or less so, the day after I last was there our colleagues went back the previous day and -- shells started falling around them near the entrance to the metro station, so yeah, this is pretty hard territory.
Like hence the protective equipment. Hence the protective equipment we're all decked out in. Okay, so we've arrived in Saltivka. Can see there, I love Kharkiv sign behind me and this is the shopping complex. More and more destruction, more of what we've seen in other parts of Ukraine. the difference is that there's still -- landing in the city. These are quite modern buildings, this is new developments and things that have just been smashed up, you have to knock them down, start from scratch.
Hopefully, a --, another --, doesn't hit them. Burned, mangled, absolutely decimated. I mean, there's not too much I can really say, but just look at it. We're going to head into the metro station now, which is where a lot of the residents, the ones that have stayed and haven't fled Kharkiv are living. So, we're going to go down into the metro station, see the people living underground for fear that they're going to get --. I'm sure you can imagine in your town or city, sandwich bar, café, this is modern, this is new, destroyed.
It's a Vodafone shop, I can walk in there right now, look. Pharmacy here. Second-biggest city in Ukraine ripped into pieces. So, some of these people will be coming up for like a cigarette from the bottom, get some fresh air. There's just hundreds of people living here. It's quite humid, they're damp. People drying their clothes. There's even people living inside the parked metro train.
Some children in there. Some kids toys. There's a little potty there, child's toilet, makeshift shelters and houses. These people have been living in here for months, this is their existence. A lot of the houses here have been wiped out. There's a cat here. I cannot imagine begin to ever relate to what's going on. Just imagine one day you wake up, your apartment's being -- or apartments around you destroyed, maybe even family members --.
What do you do? You come down here. Just walking past the toilets here, but we just met a local volunteer, and she didn't want to be on camera, she's exhausted, she hasn't been upstairs, up these stairs for three days, and she walks to other parts of the city through the tunnel of the metro, so she's walking like 15 kilometers to get to other parts of Kharkiv through these tunnels, check it out. She was also mentioning that people are occasionally dying from terminal diseases and things, obviously people's pre-existing health issues continue.
You were saying, Tom, in one of your articles that somebody said that when they go outside, they feel like they're playing lottery with their life. - It was her. - It was that lady that we just met. So keep in mind that some of these people haven't seen daylight in days, some of them maybe even weeks or longer. Many of them lost their houses.
So we're here with Natalie and a lady who's living here, Tatiana. I know that we know what's going on, but would she just like to explain why she's currently living in a metro station? When the shelling started on the 24th of February I was still watching what was happening and on the 4th of March, Friday, I couldn't be at home anymore. I saw that I could find myself in the corridor under the rubble forever. It hurts to read summaries of the dead.
And is she's just down here alone, or does she have family down here? Last year, I lost a family member to covid, one of my sons is in Kharkiv the other one lives in Poland. Do you have a message for Putin? Stop -- Ukrainians. Be safe, take care of yourself.
All will be Ukraine. Ukraine will win. - That's shelling? - Yeah, that's --. As soon as we walk out, we hear it. Pretty much, I'm surprised it took us this long to hear it. Okay, so we've met up with these guys that are taking us to distribute some humanitarian aid. This is like the outskirts of Kharkiv we're going to?
It's at the very outskirts of Kharkiv, yeah. So over the last few days the Ukrainian -- has managed to liberate a few towns that have been on the front line for a while, and we're going out quite near those towns. They've only just become even reasonably safe to go to. Before this, the Russians were targeting them quite closely with -- that was posted, but we hear that a lot of that --'s now been pushed back. So, this is bread and pork. So, you can just hear in the background constant shelling, and we're just approaching a house that was hit by a --, they were saying.
Yeah, by a --. Russian Federation, four kilometers. What's he saying? He's saying, so the Russian positions are four kilometers in that direction. Oh, what a man, wish we had such men, how are you? You all right? Oh, you're in body armor, you've got nothing to be scared of. So again, the shelling continues in the background. You can't really make it out on the microphone too much, it's constant shelling.
This old couple that we just met in here, they got holes in their roof. A lot of the buildings around here, the roofs have been absolutely destroyed. This is from cluster --, which are legal under international law. We're really close to the front line right now, apparently two to three kilometers there's the trenches, and the Russians, and the Ukrainians fighting head-to-head. So, there's this phrase that you'll keep hearing them saying, it means the Russian world, and the idea that is basically that the Russians have said eastern Ukraine is actually, everyone's Russian speaking, it's really part of Russia,
it's part of this wider Russian world that the Russians kind of want to protect and look after, so you'll often see them pointing to the rubble or the destruction and being like, look, that's what the real means for us, just kind of endless misery and chaos. He says this is how the Russian world has come to free us. while pointing out to destroyed houses. You see, the Russian TV news covers these -- events completely differently from what's actually happening. I'm sorry, we are here, we see it. The Russians call us Ukrainian nationalists, although Kharkiv has been called separatists since 2014 because we were more loyal to Russia so to speak.
The vast majority of people speak Russian here, that's why we're being called separatists, although, excuse me, we speak Ukrainian fluently because we've started and lived here. There's a ring road about three kilometers away from here, there was shelling somewhere there, now the shelling is moving towards us. Many people have gone to the metro station and this street here we've seen houses that have been -- as little as three days ago.
What makes her want to stay here? Why we didn't go to the metro station it's hard to say, home is home, you know, home is better in any case. We've got used to it, adapted and also, my husband had a stroke in January, it's difficult, so it's easier at home. Almost everyone on our street has left only five households remain, one or two persons in each. So -- just rained down over this backyard here. So all the electricity and the running water is not working anymore here and because many people have evacuated this area and just left their houses behind because, keep in mind, the front line's like two kilometers from here
and -- are still raining down, you know, a few days ago was the last ones this lady here has taken in the neighborhood animals, and she's caring for them and things, and she just does not want to leave her house. It's got a nice garden with bee hives and veggie garden, and thing, and you can see just cluster -- raining down on top of their houses. So, there's a huge crater in the ground here, and Tom, do you want to explain this? Well, this was a grad --. So a grad is basically it's a battery of rockets that's held on the back of a truck, and it will fire.
There are 30 rockets, and we'll usually fire them all at one time, so you'll go. Until they've all landed, and obviously can kind of absolutely carpet an area with explosives and this is just one of 30 impacts that would have come from this one battery. Just this whole street's just absolutely destroyed. There's ladder here, this one's completely burnt out. Have a look inside, somebody's bedroom here. Got their football heroes on the wall, young boy maybe. Kitchen, food's still in the fridge rotting, there's flies. Just a whole roof caved in, you know.
A young modern family maybe, running for their lives. So this house was --, person inside was --, and they were buried in the backyard here. More shelling in the background. There's the grave. And just as we got here, huge shelling in the background. So this is where the shell hit, elderly lady, there she's been buried. She's spent hours, and years, probably working on this garden, lots of crops and vegetables laid out, there's a cat there that might have been her cat, now she's buried where she spent hours of her time perfecting her beautiful garden.
The constant shelling continues, I don't know if you can hear that, but that's the front line, and like I've said, I don't know if you can make it out, but it's heavy and it's continuous. There you go. They're still living in this house? Right, with mud.
So the kitchen's okay, but the rest of their house is destroyed. We're just starting in the living room here, and we're going to move into this other room, and you can see, they've even got the birthday decorations still up, and for their birthday, they had a -- hit their house. The man showing us around this house here saying that luckily they were out in the garden, so they didn't actually get hit, but he's in tears right now, he's very emotional, he's got the pieces of the -- and the -- in his hand.
I was standing here holding up, and then the -- hit hard. I got behind the doors, my eyes got covered. Here there was a crater, the third and the fourth -- came and hit hard. If I had gone into that room, it would have been catastrophic. The rubble would have buried me. Immediately it collapsed. I'd like to thank this group of volunteers for giving us accommodation and food. My father and I are living in an outdoor kitchen and cellar, may god give them health.
I thank them for taking care of us, we are very happy. They fully supply this neighborhood with food and accommodation and worry about us. They do everything to make our lives normal. Okay, so we've come to the center of Kharkiv in constitution square, just to give you guys a bit of a perspective of like, some parts of the city are absolutely thrashed, but there are still parts, obviously they've got the sandbags
and the protection on the statue here, but there's some really beautiful buildings around. Some of them do have smashed windows and things, but it's not beyond repair, so that's hopeful at least. That's huge, that's like one and a half height of me, Yeah, I mean, it must have been the epicenter of a -- --. Some parts of the city are completely okay, in other parts completely not okay. Here's a soldier here.
So we've just come to freedom square and there's an unexploded -- here. Destroyed buildings everywhere, the air aid sirens going off in the background. As soon as we arrived at this --. Tom, can you describe what just happened before, when we went to as far as you can go to the front line? So we were on our way out of a little district that we'd been in with the guys we're giving out humanitarian aid, and we ended up taking what we think was just a wrong turning driving straight down, all of a sudden, a bunch of soldiers rushed out to stop us, checked all our documents and stuff, and we could see that this was a really, really heavily fortified area.
-- trap, sandbags everywhere, we could see unexploded anti--- -- being lined up all along, and they were under like, particularly they were camouflaged and yeah, it was quite frightening because they were like, yeah you're just a few kilometers away from the front line where one of the large battles is going on as we speak. And you say that, that's up there with one of the most -- places that you've been? Well, I mean, probably, we weren't there for particularly long but in terms of, that's the kind of place that you hung around in long enough, you would very almost certainly get quite heavily shelled by Russian --.
So we've just come back to the apartment, it's about 20 minutes walk from that big square area. So yeah, nice apartment, luckily Tom's friend owns it or something, so they're letting us stay for free, they're not currently here. A lot of these apartments are empty. You see a few people, but yeah, from here I can't see any signs of life in these houses. A couple of hours ago maximum there was a -- -- or a -- in a park that's just literally really close to this apartment, about two-minute walk, so we're going to go and see the aftermath, basically.
Pretty intense place and there's some areas that seem really calm and there's like, we went to a little café and had some lunch and things, but then other areas are quite intense. Like, we walked around this corner and there's just blown up buildings, and then there's -- hiding behind sandbags with camo over them. Lots of -- in the streets coming up and telling us what we can, and we can't film. They're very friendly, but obviously, they've got security to stick to and they don't want pictures of certain areas out for the Russians to see,
to possibly use that to help aid their attacks. So, let's go and see the aftermath of this explosion. It's been one hell of a day. So this is the park that was -- today, a few hours ago. We just met a woman, you saw a few clips there, and she said that she wouldn't recommend we come here. It's a nice peaceful park, you know, it's absolutely beautiful. It's been -- twice in the last month, I think. It just seems so calm you could never imagine that a -- is about to land in this place, but it's just indiscriminate, can be anywhere.
This is the ticket counter for this ride here. Smells like fresh burnt. There's heaps of these craters all over the park. This is a family amusement park, kids rides, theme park, things to do for the kids, look at it. So, this is just along the road. Today this building was -- right behind me while we were out. Our building is right there, it's just behind that building, that's where we're staying.
Just met a couple that we met before, this building was -- today, another building up there was --, this is all in the area where we're staying, and obviously these people live here, and I asked her how does it feel when you come out and see this, and she just, she can't believe, but she's smiling, and she's positive, and I guess when your city's been -- for months on end that you build up some kind of a coping mechanism, but who am I to know, I could never relate to these people and what they're experiencing. I'm going to end the video there. I just want to say, if you want to help out with the crisis here, help out first responders or people with humanitarian aid and things
getting supplies to those people who need it the most on the front lines and people suffering, people who are cold, people who are hungry, food supplies, blankets, and everything, you can see how desperate the situation is here, I'm going to leave information in the description box, you can go there, you can donate, any little bit of money will help. Big, small, whatever you have, if you can afford it, that would be great, if you don't, of course, completely understanding. And this country is currently under attack, and you can see, just walking past places that were --
if I was standing there a few hours ago, who knows what would have happened. So yeah, I'm gonna leave the video there. Thank you so much for watching and my heart goes out to the people of Ukraine and yeah, good evening.
