16-07-2025
Life in Kharkiv: where the show must go on
At midday on Sunday, as Ukraine caught its breath after nights of
unrelenting Russian bombardment
and President Trump mulled providing the
Ukrainian military with more weapons
, we went to the ballet.
Kharkiv's Opera House was hit by a Russian missile back in 2022, so the resident company was performing Snow White in what used to be a giant storeroom in the basement.
'It's a bit difficult,' said Olga Sharikova who was playing the title role. 'The lighting isn't very professional, and the audience is very close to us. But despite the war and everything happening around us, we keep dancing.'
'Despite the war and everything happening around us, we keep dancing.'
– Olga Sharikova
It's a scene I won't forget: an audience made up mainly of little girls and their mothers watching the spectacle rapt, forgetting for a glorious hour about drone and missile attacks and fathers fighting on the front.
'The war has intensified the need for this kind of relaxation,' one mother told me. 'It helps me to switch off, and it gives me strength.'
Such moments are precious, as Russia steps up its
summer offensive
, trying to sap the will of Ukrainians and to make territorial gains, so they can negotiate – when they're forced to – from a position of strength. For more than a year the front line has scarcely moved, while both sides have been busy developing new military technology.
Back in November 2022, I spent a
rather alarming hour
or so in a Ukrainian trench, as a Russian sniper, who was probably only 500 metres away, fired over our heads.
Few Ukrainian soldiers are in trenches now, because anything that moves on the front line is immediately spotted and targetted by a drone. About 80% of battlefield casualties on both sides are now caused by ammunition dropped from drones.
So the need for remote controlled weaponry, where the pilot can remain two kilometres or more behind the front line – is acute. Ukraine is in the forefront of innovation for both airborne drones and unmanned ground systems.
At a drone workshop, hidden in a Kharkiv suburb, Anton Begmienko showed me the latest drones he and his colleagues in the company De Visu have invented. They used to be in a band – Anton was the drummer. 'It helps,' he says, showing me his dexterity on the controls.
The Russians jam the radio signals of the drones the Ukrainian military initially used, so the latest drones are tethered to the operator by a ten or even 20 kilometre fibre optic cable. At first, few of the drones reached their targets because the cable snapped or got tangled, but De Visu and similar outfits, have changed the shape of the cylinder which contains the fibreoptic coil, and made other innovations.
The success rate has improved. The problem is that the Russians are doing exactly the same.
Anton shows me a Russian fibreoptic drone that he has reversed engineered. 'We are trying to learn from the Russians because they are smart,' he said.
Innovation in drone technology like this has enabled the Ukrainians to hold back the Russian advance, but it's not helping them to win the war, because the Russians are not only innovating but also have a much bigger armed force. That means more
drones
and more operators, which is always going to be a problem for Ukraine.
Still, Anton says motivation is more important than technology or numbers. 'They have more people than us, but their people are fighting for money,' he says. 'And we are fighting for our lives and our freedom.'
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