“Kharkiv is wounded,” says Igor Prikhodko, “but it is alive and refusing to surrender.”
Prikhodko is the director of Kharkiv’s Specialised Sports College, an elite training centre less than 30 kilometres from Ukraine’s border with Russia, whose graduates include Olympians and world champions. On 26 March 2024, the college was hit by short-range Iskander ballistic missiles – the third time it had come under attack. The assault has since been documented as a war crime by the city’s branch of Ukraine’s National Police Investigation Department.
Now, in November 2025, Prikhodko and I are standing on the college’s roof, having picked our way through broken glass and rubble, past rooms too unsafe to enter. Above us is Kharkiv’s grey autumn sky. At our feet is a large crater, where the most recent attack led the roof to collapse inwards. Through the gaping hole, we can see the destroyed ruins of what were once students’ dormitories.
