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Ukrainian soldier on a destroyed Russian tank in Mala Rohan near Kharkiv
Photo: Emre Caylak / DER SPIEGEL
Lyubov Slobina was one of the few who never left the village.
On February 24, the first day of the invasion, she saw missiles in the sky.
On the third day of the war, Russian troops were already rolling through the streets: tanks and trucks, three dozen military vehicles in all.
They stopped 300 meters from their farm, as the 62-year-old describes it.
For a month, Vladimir Putin's army occupied Mala Rohan, a small town just east of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city.
The Russian attackers positioned their rocket launchers and guns here.
Then the bombs fell on the districts in eastern Kharkiv.
At the end of March, the Ukrainian army moved into Mala Rohan and drove the Russian troops out again.
They responded with artillery fire.
It became too dangerous in the village, and most of the nearly 3,000 residents fled.
Now they are coming back one by one.
The Ukrainian defenders have now pushed the Russians back far enough for the villagers to be able to return to their homes.
Lyubov Slobina, who sits on the municipal council, and her husband Mykola deliver relief supplies for the returnees.
The packages are stacked on the back of their van: bread, water, oil, sugar, soups.
The farmer says that she was already providing people in the area with bread and meat during the occupation.
She drove on secret routes, avoided the Russian troops.
But when the Ukrainian army advanced and the Russian soldiers retreated, the latter also fired on their yard, says Slobina.
Fires broke out on the estate.
According to the 62-year-old, 140 animals were killed, and she was able to save 170, mainly pigs.
The traces of that day are still visible on the company premises: the corrugated iron over several buildings is charred, a caterpillar tractor that has been burned down is rusting away.
"That was on March 26," says Slobina, "my birthday."
Much of the devastation in Mala Rohan dates back to the days when Ukrainian soldiers moved in and their Russian opponents responded with artillery fire.
Not far from the town entrance is a burned truck.
Several houses have collapsed, a garage roof has buried a blue SUV under it.
Less than 50 meters away is a burned down Russian tank, covered in rust and with its turret torn off.
The wreckage of a shot down Russian combat helicopter lies on a large pasture.
Almost all that is left of the cabin and rotor is silver dust.
A white brushed "Z" can be seen on the tail section, the Russian symbol for this war.
Municipal councilor Slobina estimates that around 200 people have returned to Mala Rohan in the past few days.
Two dozen of them gathered on a street corner this Saturday afternoon to receive the aid packages.
The returnees got used to one thing after only a few days: artillery fire, very loud and very close.
Only this time it comes from Ukrainian cannon barrels.
The missiles did not hit the village, but were fired from here in the direction of the Russian positions to the north-east.
A Ukrainian Army truck tows a howitzer through the streets of Mala Rohan.
A soldier reports that the front has moved to Staryj Saltiv, a good 40 kilometers from Kharkiv.
North and east of the city, Ukrainian troops have pushed back Vladimir Putin's army quite a bit.
In the past few days, Kiev's armed forces have reported the capture of several locations in the Kharkiv area.
The recent land gains have several consequences:
A counter-offensive is being formed militarily, which could become significant beyond the region.
People from more and more villages report on life under Russian occupation.
The second-largest city in Ukraine, which has been under fire for weeks like few other parts of the country, is relieved.
»To the Russian border«
According to military experts, the Ukrainian troops could soon push back the attackers so far that Kharkiv is no longer within their artillery range.
Their counter-offensive north-east of the city was so successful that the Ukrainians could advance "to the Russian border in the coming days or weeks," writes the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a think tank in Washington.
The gains in territory near Kharkiv could also have an impact on the Russian campaign in the Donbass.
With their successes, the Ukrainians could force the Russian commanders to send additional troops to the Kharkiv area - troops that they actually need for their offensive in the Donbass.
According to the ISW, even such reinforcements could not be enough to prevent the Ukrainians from advancing to the border with the Russian region of Belgorod.
With the Russian troops pushing back, people from various villages in the region have fled to safety.
Some of them are accommodated in a vocational school for hairdressers and cooks in the south-west of Kharkiv.
They sleep in the rooms of the boarding school.
Lunch is served to the refugees in a small canteen on the premises.
It smells like borscht.
Furnishings are simple but arranged with care.
Alla Artjomova is sitting at one of the ten tables.
The 59-year-old comes from Ruska Losowa.
The place with its 5,000 inhabitants is located a few kilometers north of Kharkiv, on the highway that connects the city with the Russian city of Belgorod.
Artemova left her native village at the end of April when Ukrainian troops took it.
The place remains contested, the pushed back Russian forces shell it.
Artjomova says she left the village when the Ukrainians moved in and the opportunity arose.
Very few stayed, it was simply too dangerous.
Russian bombers would continue to attack, tearing craters twenty feet in circumference.
Already at the beginning of the war, Russia's army took Ruska Losova.
Soon after, the electricity disappeared and food became scarce, according to residents.
Some of the young men in the village looked for food in a chicken factory, says Artemova.
The trained cook spent most nights in a cellar where vegetables are stored.
The roof of her house was destroyed, she says, like many roofs in town.
The occupiers plundered houses whose owners were not at home.
"They climbed over the fences, sometimes they shot the locks," says the 59-year-old.
"Then they came out with big black bags."
The Russian troops were therefore also looking for men who fought in Donbass from 2014.
In addition, the occupiers called on people to leave the village for Russia, says Artjomova.
"They shouted it through the streets and from a church tower with a loudspeaker," she says.
"They said: 'You should go to Russia, it will be dangerous, we will conquer Kharkiv.'" Some people followed the call, says the 59-year-old.
But that was not necessarily a political decision.
Most of those who went to Russia were people with small children.
These are reports similar to those heard in other parts of Ukraine that fell under Russian rule: the search for Donbass veterans, for example in Cherson in the south;
the evacuation – the Ukrainian leadership speaks of deportation – to Russia, for example from the devastated Mariupol.
Sexual assaults are said to have occurred in the Kharkiv region.
One case reportedly involves a woman hiding at a school in Mala Rohan with her five-year-old daughter, mother and siblings;
she is said to have been repeatedly raped by a Russian soldier.
According to Lyubov Slobina, the local councillor, a 14-year-old girl was also said to have been raped in the village.
The information cannot be verified at this time.
A spokeswoman for the armed forces only confirmed that a possible case actually affects a 14-year-old.
Significantly fewer bombs are now falling on Kharkiv
The territory gained by the Ukrainian defenders in the Kharkiv area not only means that possible crimes during the occupation period could be investigated.
They also have consequences for life in the city itself. According to the authorities, significantly fewer bombs are now falling on Kharkiv: 50 to 80 shells a day hit the city area recently, but now it's only two to five.
Kharkiv is still a city at war.
The streets are pretty empty.
The district of Saltivka in the north-east continues to be shaken by violent attacks on a regular basis.
And the scars of the past two months are still visible everywhere.
According to official figures, the Russian attacks have made 2,000 blocks of flats in the city uninhabitable.
But at the same time life returns, even lightness.
Artists and cultural workers have come together in a basement with a recording studio in the center of the city.
Some of them come straight from their posts, in uniform and armed.
One of them is Serhiy Vasyljuk.
The 38-year-old singer of a rock band from Kyiv traded his Taylor guitar for an AK-47 assault rifle at the beginning of the war.
He has been defending Saltivka for four weeks.
But today he sits in the recording studio and sings.
The whole thing will be broadcast live on the Internet.
After Wasyljuk, Serhiy Zhadan enters the studio.
Probably the most important contemporary Ukrainian writer comes from the Donbass and lives in Kharkiv.
He recites one of his poems, a declaration of love to Kharkiv and all of Ukraine.
A young soldier stands in front of the cabin and listens.
Maria Awdeewa has arrived in the culture cellar together with Zhadan.
The political scientist heads a think tank in Kharkiv.
She is one of the most sought-after political observers in the country.
The Ukrainian army's recent gains in territory are a good sign, says Avdeewa.
In order to stop the Ukrainian counter-offensive, the Russian troops were even forced to destroy several bridges.
The expert warns against too much optimism.
"Even if they're not trying to take control of Kharkiv right now, that doesn't mean it won't happen in the future," says Avdeeva.
"Because Kharkiv has always been of strategic value for Russia."
She points to the increasing number of Russian attacks on infrastructure across the country.
These are aimed at cutting off supply routes.
Avdeewa sees this as a sign that Russia is preparing for a long fight.
This war, she says, will not end soon.
