Is there another way to fight the Russian army, if you don’t dress in military fatigues or own a weapon?
The research director of a think tank called UA Experts thinks she has found a way, armed with a smartphone, a social media account and years of legal training.
Her name is Maria Avdeeva, and we began to listen to her reports in Kharkiv, the embattled Ukrainian city just 20 miles from the Russian border.
She posts daily updates from bombed-out buildings in and around the city centre, often as incoming shells and rockets echo around her.
Kharkiv residents cover the monument to Shevchenko with sandbags to protect from Russian air strikes. I saw volunteers coming, offering to help protect the symbol of the Ukrainian nation, while Russian troops shelled the city. The historical moment of this war. pic.twitter.com/gQ9MlpAPVr
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) March 26, 2022
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“Hello, Maria Avdeeva from Kharkiv, Ukraine, 18th of March,” says one.
“I went out today to get some food and then the shelling started again, it started this morning and (it) went on and on, and I hid in this building which actually has been a business centre.”
In the , Maria walks up the stairs in a 19th century building before revealing a devastated office with desks, chairs, and computers covered in dust and glass.
“I am just (struck) by what I see,” she says. “People were running out of here, leaving everything (behind). They didn’t anything with them, they left everything here.”
Her voice trails off with an anguished tone.
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Surviving underground in Kharkiv
Ms Avdeeva has gone to war with Vladimir Putin with one strategic objective in mind.
She is determined to document the bombardment of Kharkiv in the knowledge that the destruction will be denied by the Russian government and its state-controlled media.
“Russia uses cluster munitions bombs here in Kharkiv, destroying residential buildings and the historical centre. What you see behind me is what Russian state media and propaganda channels call (a) ‘special military operation’, they deny the fact of war in Ukraine,” she says in her 16 March edition.
The security analyst’s phone reveals a long line of shops with their front windows blown to bits.
Image:
Ms Avdeeva is documenting Russian destruction in Kharkiv
‘Someone has to be active in this battlefield to show the truth’
Ms Avdeeva has won herself a large following on Twitter with this reporting project, proing facts and commentary in a city where half-a-million or more people have fled.
“Someone has to be active in this information battlefield, to show the truth, what is actually happening,” she said on the battered streets of Kharkiv.
“Because this information battlefield is (of) the same importance as the on the ground military operations.”
Image:
A firefighter extinguishes a fire in a market after a Russian attack in Kharkiv
Ms Avdeeva took us into the northern suburbs of the city, just a few kilometres from the line which dies Russian and Ukrainian troops.
A residential complex serving the staff at a nearby academic facility, the Institute of Physics and Technology, had been partially destroyed.
The Russians accuse scientists here of working on nuclear and biological weapons, and Russian forces firing rockets at one building on the site two weeks ago. In the latest attack, three apartments were destroyed, their contents exposed to the world like a child’s doll house.
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As Ms Avdeeva completed her report, an incoming artillery shell echoed throughout the neighbourhood. Startled, she checked that she was safe.
“We do not have other people coming here fighting for us, it is only us fighting for Ukraine, we ask for help from West, but on the ground, it will be only us and if we all leave, who will fight for Ukraine?” she asked.
“So you stay,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s why I stay,” she replied.
