"I like this view of the ruins," said Kateryna Bohuslavska in a neutral voice, after hanging her brand-name down jacket up on the café's coat rack. She had arranged to meet in Kharkiv's old town, opposite the stunning 19th-century buildings of the former Lux department stores and the city hall, which have stood empty since March 2022. She was a regular there, with her favorite table, her bench, her moments of melancholy, her little treats: "With cream and jam," she said, as she ordered syrnikis (cream cheese fritters), a national specialty.
Bohuslavska, 35, with her straightened black hair, perfectly sculpted eyebrows and full lips set against flawless skin, grew up surrounded by flowers: Roses and tulips grown by her father, a local market gardener from Kharkiv, this city in north-eastern Ukraine which had a pre-war population of 1.5 million residents. At the start of the Russian offensive, she fled her home, at 5:00 am on February 24, 2022, heading for the Khmelnytskyi oblast, in the west of the country.
A few months later, in August, as she was preparing to return to Kharkiv, she turned to social media to follow the offensive. There, she discovered the Russian online propaganda battalions, which she described as "worse than dragons," and decided to start posting herself. In English – a language she learned "at school, during [her] economics course at university, and then online" – so that everyone could understand what was happening in Ukraine's second-largest city. Indeed, "Kate from Kharkiv," as her account on X (formerly Twitter) is called, lives under constant bombardment in a city located only 30 kilometers from the border.
You have 71.2% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.