IT IS UNCLEAR what Russian soldiers expected as, walking in columns behind armoured vehicles, groups of them attempted to stroll into Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city. Videos on social media, circulating from early morning on February 27th, showed them moving from at least two directions, advancing from the outskirts of the city towards the centre. Hours later the same channels were brim full of videos of abandoned vehicles and cowed, young prisoners of war. Once again, a big Russian assault had failed.

Stanislav Gluzman, an IT entrepreneur who lives in the centre of Kharkiv, a city of 1.5m, said that the Russians must have thought “that Ukrainian forces would capitulate fast and people would be glad to see them.” An advance guard column, he added, had come within 450m of the city’s well-known statue to a Ukrainian national hero and poet, Taras Schevchenko, before being ambushed outside a supermarket. According to a local security official, dozens of Russians were taken prisoner.

By mid-afternoon Ukrainian soldiers were laying siege to Specialised School 134, 5km from the city centre. Inside the building were Russian soldiers who had earlier fled from their armoured cars–a convoy of at least four–after they were ambushed by Ukrainian fighters. Two more soldiers were reported to have been taken prisoner.

Dramatic footage shared with The Economist by a friend of a soldier fighting at the school showed Ukrainian troops shooting, a terrified young Russian prisoner and Ukrainian soldiers running across the road to unload arms and supplies from the attackers’ vehicles. Their doors open, they had been abandoned rather than stopped by any missiles.

Maria Avdeeva, an analyst who also lives close to the centre, said the Russians had entered the city in small groups, but Ukrainian forces were waiting to repel them. “The Ukrainian military started to destroy them” almost immediately, she said. As evening fell the sounds of battle had receded to Kharkiv’s airport and elsewhere on the city’s outskirts.

Ms Avdeeva was most struck by the sight of Russian captives seen in videos. “They look like kids! They say they were brought here from Russia’s Far East and were told they were going on a training exercise.” She added: “they were ordered to come here and they were not ready. They were not prepared for fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces. Maybe they thought Ukrainian soldiers would not fight and they could just come here easily but now, with every hour, as civilians are getting killed people are getting angrier and angrier and more united against this aggression.”

Russia’s failure to take Kharkiv has bolstered Ukrainian morale, even if the city is not yet safe. Further attacks, with more troops and heavier armour, could yet prove much harder to deal with. Kharkiv is strategically important for its roads and railway connections to the rest of the country. Ms Avdeeva said that fears Vladimir Putin, whom she said had “lost touch with reality”, might order the shelling of civilian areas in order to create panic.

Meanwhile the fighting for Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, has continued. On February 26th authorities there introduced a curfew until the morning of the 28th. Those 36 hours were needed, they said, to find and take out special-forces groups that have supposedly infiltrated the city. Anyone without permission to be outside would be considered spies. Reports of mistaken identity and corpses on the streets have since emerged.

The city remains under reasonably secure Ukrainian control, although Russian tanks are closing in and the prospect of encirclement is real. Overnight, Russian armoured vehicles were seen at Bucha, usually a cosy resort village to the north-west of Kyiv. Video footage suggested that at least part of the column was later destroyed by the Ukrainians. “Die in hell, you bastards,” declared one videographer, voicing an increasingly widespread sentiment among Ukrainians towards their invaders.

The mauled military steel of those vehicles carried a new marking, a “V”, distinct from the “Z” that many assumed to mean Zelensky. Ukrainian authorities have suggested that the V column represented a particularly dangerous threat. “Anyone who knows its location should send data to Ukrainian defenders or if possible impede their further travel,” their message said. “It is vitally important.”

So far Russian forces have been unable to take control of any of Kyiv’s airfields, despite attacking at least four of them. Battles near the Vasylkiv airbase to the west of Kyiv remain particularly sharp. Early on February 27th a missile ignited a fuel tank, which has since been left to burn. Another missile was reported to have hit the grounds of a nuclear-waste facility, although not the storage areas themselves. A children’s hospital in central Kyiv came under gunfire; one child was killed. It is impossible to say if the targeting was deliberate.

When the attack began Natalya Tyshchuk, 36, was inside the hospital with her three-month-old prematurely born daughter. Baby in arms she took cover under the windowsill, then ran down three flights to the bomb shelter. Four terrifying nights have made this second nature. Staff have done their best to make the underground cover comfortable, she said. There are intensive-care cots there, along with food and water.

The same care has not been taken elsewhere. The swift implementation of the curfew has left many people isolated, with local aid workers reporting that as many as 10,000 people are underground in Kyiv’s metro system with neither food nor water. On February 26th Ukrainian railways appealed to local businesses to supply essentials to the 600 people using Kyiv’s central station as a shelter. A few trains are still running in a western direction, with priority given to women, children and the elderly. It seems unlikely they will run for much longer. But with its two largest cities still in the government’s hands, Ukraine has survived a fourth day of Mr Putin’s war. ■

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