On 30 December 2023, a Russian missile strike on central Kharkiv damaged the city’s House of Radio, which serves as the local office for Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne and for Ukrainian Radio, which is part of Suspilne. In the building, the windows were blown out, the heating system, doors and walls were damaged, the manager of Suspilne Kharkiv Yevgenia Kolyenova said.
“We [recently] made a room where journalists could work during blackouts, we just finished the renovation, we didn’t even have time to furnish it,” Kolyenova explained. “The windows in the room are broken, the ceiling is damaged. The heating system is damaged – we drained all the water [in the building’s plumbery], because the radiators on the second floor were torn out [and] water ran from the second floor to the first.”
This is not the first time that the radio station has been damaged by Russian forces, Kolyenova explained. “[Now], the ceiling is basically destroyed, the windows which we [tried to] secure are also destroyed – [these] were [already] blown out after Russia’s first attack on this area, [but] now it’s very bad. “There are no windows in my office. The ceiling collapsed in the chief engineer’s office. There is electricity in the building. The basement was not damaged. Almost all the doors do not close anymore. It is now dangerous to be in this building. The rooms facing the yard were badly damaged. The yard is also damaged,” Suspilne’s manager said, listing the damage done to the broadcaster’s offfices.
On 31 December, Suspilne’s management recorded the damage done to the building, with police asking to collect this data so that Suspilne Kharkiv can then file a complaint with police, Ukraine’s public broadcaster reported.
“We all work remotely [for security reasons],” Kolyenova said, confirming no journalists were wounded in the incident. “At the time of the explosion there was only a security guard in the building, he managed to hide in the shelter.”
In addition to the attack on the House of Radio, Russian shelling on the same day also damaged an office in central Kharkiv belonging to media group Objective. Prior to 24 February 2022, the now-damaged office was used by TV channel Simon, which is part of Objective. Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the shelling of central Kharkiv in February-March 2022, the TV channel has not been broadcasted.
Photos and videos of the premises published by Objective showed broken windows and damaged equipment. A newsroom, editing rooms and other offices were affected by the shelling, Objective reported. No information was available as to whether the media company had notified law enforcement of the incident for investigation as a possible war crime.