Odessa Railway Station at 10:00 pm.
Classical music played through loudspeakers on the dark platforms due to blackout indicates the departure of the train to Kharkov. Arrival time unknown, "about 10 hours" we are told, we finally arrive after 14 hours. Kharkiv is the second largest city and the first capital of Ukraine. Campus, technology center and headquarters of many companies dealing with new technologies. We leave the station, we face a deserted city, shops closed, minimal people on the sidewalks.
On the empty streets with the lights off, mainly military and police vehicles are circulating and explosions are heard from the suburbs. "He is from the Ukrainian air defense," the young couple waiting for us outside the station tells us. They are members of the "Hell's Kitchen of Kharkiv". A group of volunteers working hard to help the city's civilian population. They prepare food and offer help to the elderly, the sick and people who have lost their homes due to the bombing.
We get a first taste of the situation in the city. Damaged government buildings and corporate offices in the center. A little further out the situation is much worse. Destroyed houses, collapsed apartment buildings, broken-down cars, militiamen searching the rubble for the dead and people still living in their dilapidated houses.
Sirens are often heard calling people to go to shelters. Road traffic is difficult, there are many checkpoints and commands for what we are allowed to photograph and what not very strict, continuous checks.
We arrive at the volunteer base just before the curfew at 6:00 pm an old and very well renovated four-storey building intended for Airbnb. Unfortunately the only room that is empty is on the 4th floor; this is bad for a city that is being bombed. We remove the beds from the windows and fall asleep.
5:00 in the morning, work orgasm in the kitchen and on the ground floor. Every day with very good organization, method and great fun, two thousand portions of food leave here.
We continue the trek to the city. The person from the organization that accompanies us receives a phone call. A rocket landed in an apartment building next to a target factory. Let's go straight, the woman who lived there returns from the shelter, faces her house and bursts into tears. Neighbors comfort her and help her pick up some clothes to leave.
Our guide suggests we go to a former Soviet nuclear shelter nearby and of course we agree. An iron door leads us two floors below the earth's surface. A large corridor and we reach a steel security door. We enter the shelter, humidity and cold, ranch in a row, mattresses on the floor, makeshift tables, benches and people wrapped in blankets and jackets. Spread out clothes and makeshift partitions. They feel safe, but the conditions are very difficult. The people are very kind and hospitable to us; they offer coffee and chocolate.
We leave from there and go to the main metro station which is used as a shelter. The picture is shocking, hundreds of people lying on top of each other on mattresses, sleeping bags, blankets, cardboard, others on the platform and others inside the wagons of a train that has stopped at the station. Here the situation is much worse. People shocked, angry, smiling, look at us with tears in their eyes. We have asked to go to the front line and we are waiting for them to give us permission. Finally, a few hours before our departure from the city, we learn that we will be able to go. A military jeep leads us through level suburbs and damaged roads to the last point controlled by the Ukrainian army.
Rows of anti-tank barricades and the macabre spectacle of a dead Russian soldier hanging from one of them. As the Ukrainian soldiers tell us, one kilometer behind these dams is the Russian army.
Michalis Karagiannis, was born in Piraeus in 1966. He studied photography at the FOCUS school and has been a photojournalist since 1989. His photographs have been published in major international print and online media, such as New York Times, Newsweek, Economist, Irish Times, 6Mois, El Mundo etc. It has covered missions in Gaza, Egypt, Turkey, Kompany (Syria). Owner of the phasma photo news agency, founding member of the phasma2 photography team and the Hellenic Photojournalist Association (EFE). Associate of Reuters. In recent years he has been collaborating with the Eurokinissi agency. He has participated in group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, at the Tuff Gallery, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rethymno, etc. He has received the EVGE award and the 1st prize at the Sarajevo Festival (2013). His recent participations were in an exhibition on refugees (2016-2017), under the auspices of the Parliamentary Foundation, in Athens and Brussels and in the exhibition ntAnthropause¨ (2020) of the Museum of Photography of Thessaloniki -MOMus.