THE EMBATTLED CITY
On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, beginning the largest conventional military campaign in Europe since World War II. In the northern area of operations, the primary target was Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv. The first Russian shells exploded within the avenues and apartment blocks on February 24 and within hours there were infantry clashes and armored combat in the suburbs. The city battle intensified through March and April as a vigorous Ukrainian defense held the Russians at bay. By mid-May the Russians had been driven out of Kharkiv. Whether this victory remains permanent or not, remains to be seen, at least at the time of writing.
The 2022 battle of Kharkiv has a dark and ironic historical resonance. Formerly referred to as Kharkov, the city was one of the most violently contested urban battlegrounds on the Eastern Front during World War II. During that conflict Soviet forces, including legions of Russians, expended hundreds of thousands of lives attempting either to defend or recapture Kharkov from the Wehrmacht. In the process, war rolled back and forth like waves through the city. In total, between October 1941 and August 1943, the city exchanged hands four times. But while the great battles of Stalingrad, Leningrad, and Kursk have become historically seminal, the repeatedly violent struggle for Kharkov is less prominent, despite the fact that the city’s fortunes were central to the outcome of war on the southern Eastern Front.
Kharkov’s fortunes were central to the outcome of war on the southern Eastern Front.
On the eve of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Kharkov was the fifth largest city in the Soviet Union, with a population of about 850,000. Located in northeastern Ukraine, within quick reach of the Russian border, Kharkov was a critical piece on Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s military-industrial chessboard. It was a gateway city, a major road and rail communications hub connecting Crimea, the Caucasus, and Russia. Through the city’s railyards flowed black gold from the great oilfields of the Caucasus and the products of Ukraine’s immense agricultural lands—corn, wheat, barley, rapeseed, cooking oils. But Kharkov was also a powerhouse industrial zone. It was a center for both tank and aircraft production. During the 1930s, its factories were responsible for the development and production of the BT-5 and BT-7 fast tanks, the T-26 light tank, and the
