The city still receives dozens of civilian refugees daily from front-line villages and is rebuilding destroyed infrastructure.

While Kharkiv's current population of 1.3 million, or around the same as Estonia's, is only a little down on its pre-war level of 1.4 million, this masks the fact that around 200,000 people currently living there are refugees, for instance from nearby Kupiansk.

One of these, Nadija, recalled: "A shell landed right at our front door."

"We were hoping for a miracle. We stayed home until the last instant. We hoped the war might end. Then a shell hit the stairwell. That's when we finally called the Angels of Salvation to evacuate us," Nadija went on, referring to a Ukrainian charity.

ERR's Anton Aleksejev and Kristjan Svirgsden visited a refugee center, where they spoke to others in similar situations.

Refugee center coordinator Serhii Musijenko said, "Recently, the number of refugees from the city and district of Kupiansk has significantly grown. In May alone, we took in 586 people from there."

Despite the attacks and refugee influx, Kharkiv tries to maintain the image of a peaceful city. Buildings damaged early in the war are being restored, waiting for their owners to return. Kharkiv was among the first places hit, on the morning of Feb. 24, 2022.

Mayor Ihor Terekhov said 160,000 Kharkiv residents are currently homeless due to Russia's aggression.

"They want to return to their hometown. People want to come back home. Once all the houses are repaired, people will have a place to return to," he said.

Kirill, a construction worker, showed the camera crew a building that once housed about 500 people. Now only about 20 remain.

Should these abandoned apartments be given to refugees who want to stay in Kharkiv, even as rentals?

"Only the owners of those apartments can decide that," Terekhov said.

"Whether to rent them out or move back in themselves," he added.

Buildings are being restored while Russian forces try to create a "buffer zone" — within Ukraine's sovereign territory. This raises the question: why rebuild if everything could be destroyed again?

Kirill answered: "No one can guarantee that. We hope for the best. If we expect the worst, we might as well sit in the basement all the time. We always hope for the best, that's why we're rebuilding."

Terekhov was more pointed. "What 'buffer zone'? They already tried not just to create a 'buffer zone,' but to take over all of Ukraine, including Kharkiv. You can see the results for yourself now," he said.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin's conditions for ending the war include the demand that western leaders pledge to stop enlarging NATO eastwards and to lift a chunk of sanctions on Russia, Reuters reported.

Kharkiv did not fall early in the war, partly because Russian forces were tied up in Kherson, in the south. Ukraine liberated it in November 2022, pushing Russian troops across a "golden bridge" left intact for that purpose.

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