Kharkiv: Love in a warzone

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 7 September 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Over the past year, BBC Eye has documented life in Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, helping to capture the deeply personal stories of those living under the continuing shadow of war. Just 30 kilometres from the Russian border, this Russian-speaking city has sustained some of the heaviest attacks of the war.

Reporter Albina Kovalyova follows the stories of people who have nevertheless chosen to continue to live in Kharkiv. One, a writer from the Czech Republic who unexpectedly found love during a visit to this frontline city last year – and who uprooted her life in Prague to move to Ukraine to be with him. He’s an artist from Kharkiv, Konstantin Zorkin, who describes his belief in the transformative power of art and love.

These personal stories of love and life are intercut with the violence Russia continues to unleash on this city of over a million people. And they are set against a shifting geopolitical backdrop, of ultimatums and recriminations and talks, as all the while the attacks on Kharkiv and Ukraine continue.

Presenter & reporter: Albina Kovalyova Producer: Louise Hidalgo Editor: Rebecca Henschke Executive Producer: Michael Simkin

Image: Adela and Konstantin (Credit: Konstantin Zorkin)

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm at the Polish-Ukrainian border. It's midday. It's hot outside, 33 degrees. I'm waiting here. I've been waiting here for more than four hours in a queue. They work really slowly here. This is the longest time I've been ever waiting on my way to Ukraine.
0:26.6	But anyway, I can't wait to be with Kostya.
0:30.6	Czech writer and journalist Adela Knappava has almost lost count of the amount of times she's crossed the border here into Ukraine.
0:42.2	It looks like it's my turn to go to move another two meters, so I'm going to do it now.
0:51.8	I just can't wait to give us closer, and I'm tired, to be honest. We are all tired. Everyone here is tired.
1:02.2	It was over a year ago that Adela first met the Ukrainian artist Konstantin Zorkin, or Kostia, as she likes to call him.
1:11.0	It was in Kharkiv, where Kostia lives, in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine,
1:16.3	one of the most bombed cities in the country.
1:19.6	Adela was there for a rider's residency.
1:22.5	It wasn't quite love at first sight, but it wasn't far off.
1:26.5	Within weeks, Adela had packed up her life in Prague and moved to Kharkiv to be with him.
1:32.3	If someone told me even one year ago that I will live in Kharkiv, that I will fell in love,
1:40.3	and that I will be happy in Kharkiv, and that I will live all my Prague life for Kharkiv.
1:48.8	I would consider that person a crazy man or woman.
1:53.0	I just, I would say, it's no way, no way.
1:57.6	But that's what she did.
2:00.5	Harkiv is an important cultural, educational and industrial center, close to Ukraine's north-eastern border with Russia, which is why it suffered some of the worst attacks of the war.
2:12.6	Oh, my daughter.
2:18.3	My daughter.
2:19.3	Karkiv, the area is called Silbo Danchena, which means country of freedom in translation.
2:33.3	Because they were always standing like this. We are Ukraine.
2:36.1	We will never be Soviets. So you cannot say there is a safe place in Ukraine because each place
	...

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