404. The Reinforced Character of Kharkiv

Battleground

Goalhanger

History

4.5 • 824 Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2026

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On their final night in Kharkiv, Saul, Boldi, Kim, and Julius gather for a debrief to reflect on a city caught between extreme opposites. Fresh off an overnight train from Odesa, they arrived just in time for International Women’s Day—witnessing a blue-sky celebration of smiles and flowers juxtaposed against the smoking ruins of a freshly struck residential building.

They dive deep into the unique friction of daily life in Kharkiv, where air sirens have become a permanent backdrop to existence. They share extraordinary firsthand accounts from the ground, including:

A Surreal Encounter: The story of a traumatised survivor pushing a fistful of valuable Russian rubles toward them, declaring that the currency must have dropped straight out of the bomb.
The Kupiansk Dynamic: A look at the fluid, nearby front lines where Ukrainian forces are currently encircling the last holdouts of Russian troops.
Institutional Hurdles: A candid discussion on the Ukrainian army’s struggle to scale innovation from elite units like the Khartiia brigade down to the "no-name" brigades.
The Russian Way of War: An analysis of Russia's ability to learn as an organisation over a long war, balanced against their history of devastating troop losses.

Finally, the team explores the evolving and complex role of women on the front lines. From a compelling interview with Katya—a special operations soldier who warns that Kyiv is now the more dangerous destination—to a Khartiia brigade story about female staff members turning down traditional Women's Day gifts in favour of a day on the rifle range, this episode highlights the unbreakable, "reinforced concrete" character of the Ukrainian people.

The team wraps up as they prepare to catch an early morning train to Kyiv to see what the next chapter of their journey holds.

Julius Strauss writes the blog Back from the Front and also owns and runs Wild Bear Lodge, a bear-viewing lodge, in Canada. Check out both in the links below:

Substack: https://backfromthefront.substack.com/

Wild Bear Lodge: https://wildbearlodge.ca/

Join the Conversation: If you have a question about the war in Ukraine or any of the conflicts we cover, email us at podbattleground@gmail.com

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Producer: James Hodgson

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Transcript

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0:00.0	So it's our last night in Harkiv. It's been a pretty intense couple of days and we're just going to have a quick debrief with Julius Baldi and Kim and from a personal
0:22.9	perspective. It's been actually much more moving than our last trip to Harkeve. It feels as if
0:29.2	something's really changed about this city. It's extraordinary to hear from Katia, the last
0:35.8	person we interviewed, who whose special operations soldier,
0:39.1	she's done the most ridiculously dangerous things for a woman over the last two or three years.
0:44.3	And she said, oh, please be safe when you get to Kiev because it's much more dangerous than
0:48.7	Harkiv. And I never thought I'd hear those words coming from anyone, particularly someone
0:53.0	who really knows what danger is.
0:54.5	But it's been extraordinary time.
0:55.9	We've seen some pretty grim sites, but also heard some quite uplifting things, I think.
1:00.9	Do we agree with that?
1:02.2	Yeah, absolutely.
1:03.2	I mean, the one thing that I've felt very strong about Kharkiv this time, I often feel
1:08.0	this, but I've really felt it, is that Kharkiv in many ways embodies
1:11.4	this war in a way that Kiev doesn't. And you had, you know, right at the beginning of the war, we were at the school yesterday, the Russians really should have taken this city. I mean, there's really no excuse for their failing. They bombed the hell out of the center of it. They got all the way down the roads. They sent in their special forces, and yet
1:27.9	somehow they didn't. And then towards the end of 2022, you had the counteroffensive, you know, this huge chunk of land was taken back by the Ukrainians going all the way to Kupiansk and beyond Kupiansk. So then there was this wave of massive optimism. And then we had the 2023 counteroffensive, of which kind of stalled, and that's not that far away.
1:46.0	You know, down the road at Bachmoud, I know it happened of massive optimism. And then we had the 2023 counteroffensive, which kind of stalled, and that's not that far away.
1:46.0	You know, down the road at Bahmoud, I know it happened further south as well.
1:49.8	And now you've kind of got this stasis, and you've got this city where it's just, you see
1:55.6	these extreme opposites.
1:57.0	You know, yesterday we were walking around all these women with flowers and everybody's happy and the streets are full.
2:03.3	And yet we drove to the edge of town and there's people with wet eyes watching, looking at a building where their whole world has just been torn apart by a Russian rocket.
	...

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