In Ukraine’s Kharkiv, a city — and a people — with the strength of concrete

 Whether young or old, residents in Kharkiv have spent the past 24 months among airstrikes and chaos, seeing the injured and knowing not everyone would survive.

In the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, people say, “Kharkiv misto zaelzobeton.”

The phrase translates to English as, “Kharkiv is reinforced concrete” — a testament to a city that’s been broken, but not destroyed, two years after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

“It is a city of unbreakable and invincible people,” one woman on the street told the Global News crew there to mark the second anniversary of the invasion.

And the slogan has become a lifeline.

“Since Feb. 24, I have seen a lot of grief and tragedies,” says Volodymyr Tymoshko, the city’s police chief.

He says part of his job since the invasion has been to document the deaths of the 3,000 civilians in Kharkiv killed in the Russian attacks — and 89 of those are children.

Tymoshko grew up in Kharkiv, and knew he would protect it no matter what.

That doesn’t mean he hasn’t been scared. He says only an idiot would not be afraid of what Russia has thrown at the city and the country over the past two years, with no sign of stopping.