Inside Underground Bunker During Bombing in Ukraine War

The constant shelling continues, it's heavy and it's continuous. There's even people living inside the park metro train. So, she's walking like 15 kilometers to get to other parts of Kharkiv through these tunnels, check it out. Somebody said that when they go outside they feel like they're playing lottery with their life. Unexploded missile here, destroyed buildings everywhere, the air raid sirens going off in the background. I got behind the doors, my eyes got covered. The third and the fourth rocket came and hit hard. You can see, just walking past places that were bombed. If I was standing there a few hours ago, who knows what would have happened. This video series is my personal account of traveling within Ukraine during the war, including going to the Far East to the front line. Nothing more, nothing less. Vladimir Putin has launched a major military operation against... Today, this building was bombed. Sounds you can hear behind us is Russian artillery hitting the city. Just wanted to destroy the civilization. This is my house. This is your house. So, what you're saying is this war is more scary than World War II. Bits of missile, explosive smell. This is the Russian world. Destruction everywhere. When they go outside, they feel like they're playing lottery with their life. Unexploded missile here, destroyed buildings everywhere, the air raid sirens going off in the background. This one's completely burnt out. It's probably one of the most dangerous cities in the world at the moment. Let's see how this goes. It's really quite hard for me to convey how many bullet holes are here. Now, we've been told to stay right here because they expect that a Russian counter-artillery... Coming to you from Kiev train station. About to get a sleeper train to Kharkiv. Kharkiv is a city that's been absolutely decimated. Population about 1.4 million before the war, but now half the population has actually left the city. It's under constant bombardment. There was attack today. Apparently, at night it can get quite grim with the attack. If you're wondering if I'm just going into this with blind optimism, I've got the necessary protective equipment. Not gonna lie, quite nervous. It's a helmet and a flak jacket, armor. I am meeting up with a friend soon, who's actually been to Kharkiv twice during the war. He's a war journalist, so I do have the right guidance and things. But, of course, I am quite nervous. It's going to be an active war zone. It is being bombed every day. Let's go into this train station. We'll get there in the morning. Luckily, the train lines haven't been bombed so much yet, but some of the train stations have been. Fortunately, unlike the roads, you can still get around the country at the moment by the train lines. So, fingers crossed it stays that way. Let's see how this goes. Okay, so we've made it on the train. We're here with Tom and Natalie. Tom, what can we expect to see in Kharkiv today? A lot of blown up buildings. I've been in Kharkiv twice so far, and it's probably one of the most dangerous cities in the world at the moment. About every half hour or so you can just hear an artillery barrage. When I was last there at about 6 a.m., I woke up. Our windows were vibrating. The shelling was so close. Walking around the streets, there's almost no one there. You'll occasionally find a couple of police or maybe a few elderly people who haven't left. But the vast majority of people, they either live in their own personal shelters or they live in the metro stations. The metro stations are crammed. Each of them have hundreds and hundreds of people down there. So, all the lights on this train have to be switched off by 11 to hide from potential bombing so they can't target the train. They're dimmed down now but they're going to be completely shut off and then we'll be going through the night in a completely dark train. It's pretty wild. So, we'll see you when we get to Kharkiv in the morning. Where are we heading now, Tom? So, we're heading to Heroev Pratsi. It's a metro station in the Saltyvka district of Kharkiv. It's the place that's closest to the Russian positions. Last time I was there, they said that Russian artillery formations were about 10 kilometers away. So, it's one of the most heavily shelled and dangerous areas in the entire city. So, there's potential for shelling at any moment? More or less. So, the day after I last was there, our colleagues went back the previous day and artillery shells started falling around them near the entrance to the metro station. So, yeah, this is pretty hot territory. Hence the protective equipment. Hence the protective equipment we're all decked out in. Okay, so we've arrived in Saltyvka. You can see the I love Kharkiv sign behind me. And this is the shopping complex. More and more destruction, more of what we've seen in other parts of Ukraine. The difference is that there's still missiles landing in the city. These are modern, quite modern buildings. This is new developments and things that have just been smashed up. Have to knock them down, start from scratch. Hopefully, another missile doesn't hit them. Burned, mangled, absolutely decimated. I mean, there's not too much I can really say, but just look at it. We're going to head into the metro station now, which is where a lot of the residents, the ones that have stayed and haven't fled Kharkiv are living. So, we're going to go down into the metro station, see the people living underground for fear that they're going to get bombed. I'm sure you can imagine in your town or city, sandwich bar, cafe. This is modern, but this is new. Destroyed. There's a Vodafone shop. You can walk in there right now, look. Pharmacy here. Second biggest city in Ukraine, ripped into pieces. Some of these people will be coming up for like a cigarette from the bottom. Yeah. Fresh air and a sunny day. Just some fresh air. There's just hundreds of people living here. It's quite humid, a bit damp. People drying their clothes. There's even people living inside the park metro train. Some children in there. Some kids' toys. There's a little potty there. Child's toilet. Makeshift shelters and houses. These people have been living in here for months. This is their existence. A lot of the houses here have been wiped out. There's a cat here. Cannot imagine, begin to ever relate to what's going on. Just imagine, one day you wake up, your apartment's being bombed or apartments around you destroyed. Maybe even family members killed. What do you do? You come down here. Just walking past the toilets here, but we just met a local volunteer and she didn't want to be on camera. She's exhausted. She hasn't been upstairs, up these stairs for three days. And she walks to other parts of the city through the tunnel of the metro. So, she's walking like 15 kilometers to get to other parts of Kharkiv through these tunnels. Check it out. She was also mentioning that people are occasionally dying from terminal diseases and things. Obviously, people's pre-existing health issues continue. You were saying, Tom, in one of your articles that somebody said that when they go outside they feel like they're playing lottery with their life. It was her. It was that lady that we just met. So, keep in mind that some of these people haven't seen daylight in days. Some of them maybe even weeks or longer. Many of them lost their houses. So, we're here with Natalie and a lady who's living here, Tatiana. I know that we know what's going on, but would you just like to explain why she's currently living in a metro station? When the shelling started on the 24th of February, I was still watching what was happening. And on the 4th of March, Friday, I couldn't be at home anymore. I saw that I could find myself in the corridor under the rubble forever. It hurts to read summaries of the dead. And is she just down here alone or does she have family down here? Last year, I lost a family member to COVID. One of my sons is in Kharkiv. The other one lives in Poland. Do you have a message for a person? Stop killing Ukrainians. Be safe. Take care of yourself. All will be Ukraine. Ukraine will win. That's shelling? Yeah, that's artillery. As soon as we walk out, we hear it. Pretty much. That's insane. I'm surprised it took us this long to hear it. Okay, so we've met up with these guys that are taking us to distribute some humanitarian aid. This is like the outskirts of Kharkiv we're going to? This is the very outskirts of Kharkiv, yeah. So over the last few days, the Ukrainian army has managed to liberate a few towns that have been on the front line for a while. And we're going out quite near those towns. They've only just become even reasonably safe to go to. Before this, the Russians were targeting them quite closely with artillery that was posted, but we hear that a lot of that artillery is now being pushed back. So this is bread and pork. So you can just hear in the background constant shelling, and we're just approaching a house that was hit by a missile, they were saying? Yeah, by a rocket. A rocket. Russian Federation. Four. Four kilometers. What's he saying? He's saying, so the Russian positions are four kilometers in that direction. Ooh, what men. Wish we had such men. How are you? You all right? Oh, you're in body armor. You've got nothing to be scared of. So again, the shelling continues in the background. You can't really make it out on the microphone too much. It's constant shelling. This old couple that we just met in here, they've got holes in their roof. A lot of the buildings around here, the roofs have been absolutely destroyed. This is from cluster bombs, which are legal under international law. We're really close to the front line right now, apparently two to three kilometers. There's the trenches and the Russians and the Ukrainians fighting head to head. So there's this phrase that you'll keep hearing them saying, it means the Russian world. And the idea is basically that the Russians have said, oh, eastern Ukraine is actually, everyone's Russian speaking, it's really part of Russia, it's part of this wider Russian world that the Russians kind of want to protect and look after. So you'll often see them pointing to the rubble or the destruction and being like, look, that's what the really means for us, just kind of endless misery and chaos. He says, this is how the Russian world has come to free us. Pointing at the destroyed houses. You see, the Russian TV news covers these war events completely differently from what's actually happening. I'm sorry, we are here, we see it. The Russians call us Ukrainian nationalists, although Kharkiv has been called separatists since 2014 because we were more loyal to Russia, so to speak. The vast majority of people speak Russian here, that's why we're being called separatists. Although, excuse me, we speak Ukrainian fluently because we've studied and lived here. There's a ring road about three kilometers away from here. There was shelling somewhere there. Now the shelling is moving towards us. Many people have gone to the metro station and the street here we've seen houses that have been bombed as little as three days ago. What makes you want to stay here? Why we didn't go to the metro station is hard to say. Home is home, you know. Home is better in any case. We've got used to it, adapted. And also, my husband had a stroke in January. It's difficult, so it's easier at home. Almost everyone on our street has left. Only five households remain, one or two persons in each. Bombs just rained down over this backyard here. So all the electricity and the running water is not working anymore here. And because many people have evacuated this area and just left their houses behind, because keep in mind the front line is like two kilometers from here and bombs are still raining down, you know, a few days ago was the last ones. This lady here has taken in the neighborhood animals and she's caring for them and things and she just does not want to leave her house. She's got a nice garden with beehives and veggie garden and thing and you can see just cluster bombs raining down on top of the houses. So there's a huge crater in the ground here. Tom, do you want to explain this? Well, this was a Grad rocket. So what a Grad is, basically it's a battery of rockets that's held on the back of a truck and it will fire. There are 30 rockets and it will usually fire them all at one time. So it will go... until they've all landed. And obviously it can kind of absolutely carpet an area with explosives. And this is just one of 30 impacts that would have come from this one battery. Just this whole street is just absolutely destroyed. There's larder here. This one's completely burnt out. Have a look inside somebody's bedroom here. Got their football heroes on the wall. Young boy maybe. Kitchen. Food still in the fridge. Rotting. There's flies. Just the whole roof's caved in, you know. A young modern family maybe. Running for their lives. So this house was bombed. Person inside was killed and they were buried in the backyard here. More shelling in the background. There's the grave. And just as we got here, huge shelling in the background. So this is where the shell hit. Elderly lady. There she's been buried. She spent hours and years and years probably working on this garden. Lots of crops and vegetables laid out. There's a cat there. That might have been her cat. Now she's buried where she spent hours of her time perfecting a beautiful garden. The constant shelling continues. Don't know if you can hear that, but that's the front line. And like I've said, I don't know if you can make it out, but it's heavy and it's continuous. There you go. They're still living in this house? Right, with mud. So the kitchen's okay, but the rest of the house is destroyed. We're just starting in the living room here. We're going to move into this other room and you can see they've even got the birthday decorations still up. And for their birthday they had a missile hit the house. The man showing us around his house here was saying that luckily they were out in the garden so they didn't actually get hit. But he's in tears right now. He's very emotional. He's got the pieces of the missile and the artillery in his hand. I was standing here holding up and then the rocket hit hard. I got behind the doors, my eyes got covered. Here there was a crater. The third and the fourth rocket came and hit hard. If I had gone into that room it would have been catastrophic. The rubble would have buried me. Immediately it collapsed. I'd like to thank this group of volunteers for giving us accommodation and food. My father and I are living in an outdoor kitchen and cellar. May God give them health. I thank them for taking care of us. We are very happy. They fully supply this neighborhood with food. Thank you very much. For your attention. That's hopeful at least. That's huge. That's like one and a half height of me. Yeah, it must have been the epicenter of a missile strike. Some parts of the city are completely okay and other parts are completely not okay. Here's a soldier here. We've just come to Freedom Square and there's an unexploded missile here. Destroyed buildings everywhere. The air raid siren is going off in the background as soon as we arrived at this missile. Tom, can you describe what just happened before when we went to, like, as far as you can go to the front line? So we were on our way out of a little district that we'd been in with the guys who were giving out humanitarian aid and we ended up taking what we think was just a wrong turning, driving straight down. All of a sudden a bunch of soldiers rushed out to stop us, checked all our documents and stuff and we could see that this was a really, really heavily fortified area. Tank traps, sandbags everywhere. We could see, like, unexploded anti-tank mines being lined up all along and they were under, like, particular... They were camouflaged. And, yeah, it was quite frightening because they were like, yeah, look, you're just a few kilometers away from the front line where one of the large battles is going on as we speak. And you say that that's up there with one of the most dangerous places that you've been? Well, I mean, probably. We weren't there for particularly long but in terms of that's the kind of place that you hung around in long enough, you would almost certainly get quite heavily shelled by Russian artillery. So we've just come back to the apartment. It's about 20 minutes walk from that big square area. So, yeah, nice apartment. Luckily Tom's friend owns it or something so they're letting us stay for free. They're not currently here. A lot of these apartments are empty. You see a few people but, yeah, from here I can't see any signs of life in these houses. A couple of hours ago maximum there was a missile strike or a bomb in a park like that's just literally really close to this apartment. That two-minute walk. So we're going to go and see the aftermath basically. Pretty intense place. And there's some areas that seem really calm and there's like we went to a little cafe and had some lunch and things but then other areas are quite intense. Like we walked around this corner and there's just blown up buildings and then there's military hiding behind sandbags with camo over them. Lots of military in the streets coming up and telling us what we can and we can't film. They're very friendly but obviously they've got security to stick to and they don't want pictures of certain areas out for the Russians to see to possibly use that to help aid their attacks. So let's go and see the aftermath of this explosion. It's been one hell of a day. So this is the park that was bombed today. A few hours ago. We just met a woman. We saw a few clips there and she said that she wouldn't recommend we come here. It's a nice peaceful park. It's absolutely beautiful. It's been bombed twice in the last month, I think. It just seems so calm. You can never imagine that a bomb is about to land in this place but it's just indiscriminate. It can be anywhere. This is the ticket counter for this ride here. Smells like fresh burnt. There's heaps of these craters all over the park. This is a family amusement park. Kids rides, theme park. Things to do for the kids. Look at it. So this is just along the road. Today, this building was bombed right behind me. While we were out, our building is right there just behind that building. That's where we're staying. Just met a couple that we met before. This building was bombed today. Another building up there was bombed. This is all in the area where we're staying and obviously these people live here. And I asked her, you know, how does it feel when you come out and see this? And she just... She can't believe it but she's smiling and she's positive, you know? And I guess when your city's been bombed for months on end that... I don't know, you build up some kind of a coping mechanism but who am I to know? I could never relate to these people and what they're experiencing. I'm going to end the video there. I just want to say, if you want to help out with the crisis here, help out first responders or people with humanitarian aid and things, getting supplies to those people who need it the most on the front lines and people suffering, people who are cold, people who are hungry, food supplies, blankets and everything. You can see how desperate the situation is here. I'm going to leave information in the description box. You can go there, you can donate. Any little bit of money will help. Big, small, whatever you have. If you can afford it, that would be great. If you don't, of course, completely understanding. This country is currently under attack and you can see just walking past places that were bombed. If I was standing there a few hours ago, who knows what would have happened. So, yeah, I'm going to leave the video there. Thank you so much for watching and my heart goes out to the people of Ukraine. Good evening.