If the Russian tanks massed just a few dozen miles away begin moving right up to the Ukrainian border, Oleh Synehubov will receive a phone call, and immediately begin to implement a crisis plan.
“There is a clear plan of action,” said Synehubov, the governor of Kharkiv region, in an interview on Monday at Kharkiv’s imposing, Stalin-era administration building.
He was speaking just an hour before Russian television aired footage of a Russian security council meeting, at which Vladimir Putin set in motion the recognition of separatist republics in east Ukraine and made thinly veiled threats of a major war against the rest of the country.
Kharkiv, a largely Russian-speaking city of nearly 1.5 million inhabitants, sits just 20 miles away from the border with Russia, and is seen as one of the main possible targets for Putin.
Back in 2014, the initial Kremlin plan after the Maidan protests in Kyiv – quickly abandoned as unrealistic – was to make Kharkiv the capital of an east Ukrainian state.
Now, in Belgorod region, just the other side of the border, TikTok videos and satellite imagery show Russian armoured vehicles and troops moving ever closer to Ukraine. At the first sign of “anomalous” activity at the border, said Synehubov, an operation will be launched to warn local people of an impending Russian attack.
“There will be television, radio and internet announcements, messages to mobile phones, sirens will sound, patrol cars and fire engines will go through the city with loudspeakers to tell people what to do,” he said.
Special measures would be taken at military sites and other strategic locations, and efforts would be made to evacuate places such as care homes and schools. The exact plan, whether the orders to people were to find the nearest bomb shelter, or whether an evacuation would be instigated, would depend on the kind of invasion, he said.
“If it’s an artillery attack, then it’s clear everyone has to go to bomb shelters, if it’s a full-scale invasion then we are already in a zone of military action and there would be an evacuation.”
Synehubov said he hoped the plan would never be put into action, noting that the regional government is attempting to carry on as normal, with the local parliament sitting on Thursday to determine the budget.
But Monday’s security council meeting, followed by Putin’s angry speech, appeared to make the prospect of war come a little more sharply into focus.
On Tuesday Putin said that Russia will support the territorial claims of its proxy states in east Ukraine, two-thirds of which is currently controlled by Kyiv.
This scenario brings into play towns like Mariupol, Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, where in 2014 local separatists and their Russian backers briefly seized control, but were later won back by Kyiv.
Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, two towns north of Donetsk, were among the first places to be captured by groups of angry local people, coordinated by shady Russian operatives, back in the late spring of 2014. Now, they are proudly Ukrainian towns, filled with yellow-blue flags.
In Mariupol, where there were pitched battles in the streets during May 2014 between separatist supporters and Ukrainian forces, oligarch Rinat Akhmetov and others have poured money in, to rejuvenate the Soviet feel of the industrial town.
In other places, though, life is still tough, and exacerbated by conflict. Many of the young people have left: fleeing for a safer and better life either in Russia or in other parts of Ukraine. Places like Zolote, on the Ukrainian side of the frontline, feel like ghost towns, characterised by empty, decaying apartment blocks, muddy roads and a sense of despair, while the nights are frequently punctuated with the sound of artillery.
“Ukraine needs to do a lot more to show people we are serious about providing opportunities for them,” said Iryna Vereschuk, the deputy prime minister in charge of reintegrating the separatist territories.
Under the surface, there are still some people, particularly among older generations, who say they would welcome a Russian takeover.
“I don’t think many people have changed their minds since 2014, I think it’s just buried deep under the surface. If the Russians came, many people would greet them with flowers,” said one 52-year-old resident of Kramatorsk, who did not want to be named.
But the percentages have changed: some of those who backed separatists in 2014 later left for Russia, while others changed their minds after seeing the miserable existence in the separatist republics over recent years.
Oleksiy Vukolov, a Ukrainian army commander responsible for the front in Luhansk region, estimated about 30% of the local population on the Ukrainian side of the lines had “separatist feelings in their heads”, he said.
The one thing that everyone agrees on is that nobody in the region has a desire for further conflict. Putin, at the same time as he promises to “defend” these people, is promising just that.
If Russian forces move against Mariupol, Kramatorsk and other Donbas towns, it could be the pretext for Putin to launch a major war against Kharkiv, Odessa and perhaps even the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv.
There, local leaders are adamant that the city, with a large student population, would strongly resist a Russian invasion.
Outside Synehubov’s office, a Ukraine flag is mounted on the wall in a glass case: it was saved from the building in 2014 when it was briefly seized by separatists. It later went on a tour of the frontline and now hangs proudly on display.
Even though many people in Kharkiv would like to see Ukraine and Russia have good relations, Synehubov said opinions have changed drastically since 2014.
“Back then, in Kharkiv people didn’t understand what was happening in Kyiv, what was happening in Donbas, and the Russians were waging a very big information war. Now, there is a unified opinion that Kharkiv is a Ukrainian city and it’s part of Ukraine. The things that happened in Crimea, in Donbas, it just can’t happen here.”
