Kharkiv celebrates the return of streetlights

Kharkiv, Ukraine: Streetlights have returned to Kharkiv, bringing joy to Ukraine’s second-largest city, which has been plunged into darkness and regularly shelled by Russian forces for more than a year.

In the city center, the public lighting was switched on for almost two hours on Tuesday evening, an AFP journalist reported.

City officials said the decision was preceded by talks between Mayor Igor Terekhov and security officials.

Kharkiv is about 40 kilometers from the Russian border and regularly faces deadly shelling.

Car headlights have been the main source of illumination in the city at night for more than a year, Terekhov was quoted as saying in a statement.

“During this period, there have been many accidents in which people have been injured,” he added. The street lighting will gradually be extended to other parts of the city, said the mayor.

The return of the lights lifted spirits in Kharkiv, which was home to around 1.5 million people before the Russian invasion last February.

“Despite the wishes of the enemy, our city of reinforced concrete lives on and shines,” says a story in the Kharkiv Times.

Local writer Anna Ghin said Kharkiv residents celebrated the “victory of light over darkness”.

“I haven’t felt such strong emotions in a long time,” she wrote on Facebook.

Some people shouted “Honour to Ukraine” as officers turned on the lights, she added.

“I saw a woman sobbing so hard she couldn’t utter a word. She just yelled into her phone ‘Light, light, light,'” Ghin wrote.

Painter Nikita Titov, whose patriotic posters have gone viral since the invasion of Ukraine, posted a drawing of a street lamp against a starry sky that garnered more than 7,000 Facebook likes.

Since last October, Russia has been shelling Ukraine’s infrastructure, leaving millions in the dark.

Despite intense airstrikes, Moscow has failed to destroy the country’s power grid.