Russia stepped up its bombing of Kharkiv in December, around the time problems with American military aid began to make headlines. How the Russian Federation is trying to destroy Kharkiv, the article says The Economist, under the heading "The Kremlin wants to make Ukraine's second city unlivable."
According to the publication, more ballistic missiles have flown over Kharkiv since December than at any time since the beginning of the war. Drone attacks have become more frequent: they fly faster and higher, and they also have carbon coating on their wings, which makes them harder to shoot down. But the March 27 attack on August 23 Street was perhaps the key moment when a guided bomb, launched from an airplane and capable of traveling dozens of kilometers with devastating effect, was used against Kharkiv for the first time. The attack came just five days after a missile attack destroyed almost all of Kharkiv's energy facilities
"Military sources in Kyiv claimed that Russia has decided to make the city a "grey zone" unsuitable for civilians to live in," - write in the publication.
The mayor of Kharkiv, Igor Terekhov, resolutely denied this thesis and assured that Kharkiv has no intention of surrendering. According to Terekhov, it was worse at the beginning of the full-scale war, when all but 2 thousand people left the city, whose population was almost 300 million people.
"How can such a city be turned into a gray area? People will not go because they have already gone and then come back. They have already learned enough." - said the mayor of Kharkiv.
Terekhov admits that providing the city with electricity without power plants and working transformers was a difficult task, but assures that it was managed.
The publication emphasizes that many of the city's problems could be solved if the West provided powerful air defense systems or F-16s that could repel fighter jets with new bombs. The Economist suggests that Russia destroyed some of the Western-supplied Patriot air defense units that Ukraine used to defend cities such as Kharkiv.
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