From the first day of the full-scale war, the Kharkiv region has been in the zone of constant shelling. Russia’s military presence in neighboring territories allows it to strike every day – with missiles, drones, artillery and aerial bombs. Not only infrastructure and residential neighborhoods are under fire, but also people, including many children. Some of them die, get injured, and all of them grow up together in an environment where the sound of an explosion is already familiar.
One of the last recorded strikes occurred on July 24 around 11 o’clock. Russian aviation struck the Shevchenkiv district of Kharkiv with two guided aerial bombs weighing 250 kilograms each. The place of impact was a dense residential area, and at the time of the attack there were people on the streets, among them children.
Mayor of Kharkiv Ihor Terekhov reported, which injured 42 people, including six children: two babies aged 28 days and one month, a one-and-a-half-year-old girl, a ten-year-old child and two 17-year-old teenagers. All of them received injuries of varying severity. Medical assistance was provided in conditions of limited access to the premises, because part of the entrances were blocked by debris, emergency services were working.
As a result of the air strike, at least 20 residential buildings were damaged. Seventeen of them are apartment buildings, three are private. Inhabitants of Shevchenkivskyi and Kholodnohirskyi districts were injured. The blast wave destroyed the glass in 612 windows, partially destroyed roofs, damaged facades, balconies and supporting elements. At the time of writing, the apartment-by-apartment survey is still ongoing, so the exact number of damaged premises has not been established.
Seven private cars were also destroyed or seriously damaged, another 18 were seriously damaged. As a result of the explosion, the production workshop of one of the textile enterprises was destroyed, as well as the administrative building and warehouse of one of the communal enterprises. The electrical substation is partially damaged. Electricity was restored within a few hours.
The fact that children are among the victims is not exceptional. Since the beginning of the war, regular cases of injury or death of children as a result of shelling have been recorded in Kharkiv Oblast. These are not only schoolchildren and teenagers, but also babies and children under the age of five. Some of them were wounded at home, some on the street during ordinary household activities.
Injuries that children receive as a result of such attacks vary: they are shrapnel injuries, eye injuries, burns, brain injuries, contusions. In addition to physical consequences, some of the victims are diagnosed with acute stress disorders. This manifests itself in disturbances of sleep, speech, eating behavior, as well as in the refusal of contact with people. Babies have increased excitability, tremors, frequent bouts of crying. Such symptoms rarely fall into medical statistics, but are known to pediatricians working in frontline areas.
Children living in Kharkiv and surrounding settlements are constantly under the influence of siren sounds, air defense operations and explosions. Even in the absence of a direct attack, the psychological burden remains high. Some families spend the night in corridors or temporary shelters, there are no windows in the children’s rooms, the windows are sealed with tapes, and the furniture is moved away from possible debris.
Visiting kindergartens and schools is in many cases impossible. Some facilities are damaged or have no shelters. Lessons, if they are held, are online, but the connection is not always stable. In a number of districts of Kharkiv Oblast, there is no continuous access to a doctor, psychologist, or social worker. This creates a prolonged state of uncertainty in which children are forced to adapt to conditions that change depending on the frequency of shelling.
According to the Ukrainian military, aerial bombs were launched on Kharkiv on July 24 from the territory of Russia — from the Stroitel settlement in the Belgorod region. The strike was carried out from Su-34 aircraft. Similar airstrikes have already been recorded repeatedly in Kharkiv Oblast, including with the use of bombs of similar power.
The fact of shelling was recorded in the Unified Register of Pretrial Investigations. Criminal proceedings have been opened under the article of the Criminal Code of Ukraine on violations of the laws and customs of war. According to preliminary estimates, there was not a single object of military infrastructure at the site of the hits.
The shelling of a residential area of Kharkiv on July 24 is another episode of a constant series of attacks on cities and villages of the Kharkiv region. The peculiarity of this case is the number of injured children and the scale of destruction in the civilian sector. There is no safe time of day or specific days when attacks stop in the region. For children living in the city, being in danger has become part of the normal order of things. And every attack, even without casualties, leaves a mark not only in concrete, but also in the psyche of the people who survived it.
