Abstract:
From the first minutes of the full-scale russian aggression on February 24, 2022, the one and a half million city of Kharkiv became a direct target and object of the aggressor's capture. In just a few days, Ukraine's second most populous industrial, scientific, cultural, commercial, and student city nearly emptied: by mid-March, no more than seven hundred thousand residents remained, as in the first days, most of its districts suffered devastating missile, artillery, mortar, and bomb attacks from the enemy not only on military targets but also on civilian infrastructure, educational and children's institutions, hospitals, libraries, religious buildings, shopping centers, residential buildings, etc. In the first week of this villainous attack, combat actions took place almost in the center of Kharkiv. Thanks to the self-organization of the city's population and the heroic efforts of the military and civilian defenders of the city, who urgently united into self-defense units, despite numerous casualties among the military and civilian population, it was possible to hold the city, but the enemy was forced to retreat to the Russian-Ukrainian border in the north of the Kharkiv region under pressure from the Armed Forces of Ukraine
only in September 2022.
