From border and frontline Kharkiv to frontline Vysokopillia on January 19 the Radio Khartia team arrived together with the founder of this media, Serhiy Zhadan, a writer and serviceman of the “Khartia” corps. The tour takes place under the slogan “The country is connected by bridges”, and its evening events recreate the atmosphere of Serhiy Zhadan’s author program “Kharkiv Speaks”: here experts ironically unpack new myths and seriously analyze important events, share their stories of living through the war that may be useful to others, look into history and dissect cultural phenomena and dream about the future. An important part of the program is conversations about the new Ukrainian military culture and joint projects between military and civilians.
“The first part of our radio route is, in fact, a journey through our common Wild Field: Kharkiv — Dnipro — Zaporizhzhia — Vysokopillia,” says Serhiy Zhadan. “Over the years of the war, especially since 2022, we have felt how closely we are connected, how interdependent we are. Today it is especially important for us to stick together, hear each other, and radio, in fact, is one of those bridges that help us do that. On our radiokhartia.com we have information-analytical programs “Morning of the Wild Field” and “Evening of the Wild Field”, people, including from Kherson region, join our broadcasts, and we very much hope that our new friends from Vysokopillia will also become guests of our broadcasts. One of the tasks of our tour is, in fact, to collect stories, experiences, to hear voices.”
The team’s route will continue as follows: Kyiv, Lviv, Okhtyrka, Lubny and Vysokyi and Babai in the Kharkiv region. The project team says it seeks to collect stories from different corners of the country, and in fact they call the tour a “tour of mutual support”.
The first to meet the Radio Khartia team in Vysokopillia was the young audience: pupils of the Vysokopillia support secondary school. For them the “kind pirates of the radio air” prepared the program “Media for Us”: about the world of information that is rapidly changing, and how not to get lost in that world. “These kids are really great, they already understand how to distinguish truth from fiction, how to know which channels cannot be trusted and why,” says Olena Huseynova, host and creative producer of Radio Khartia. “Our task is to help them a little, to share what helps us ourselves.”
Together with the hosts the children analyze fakes in Telegram channels and look at how to quickly recognize a fake.
“Are you also tired of a bunch of Telegram channels, TikToks and various informational junk? Serhiy and I have an idea that may seem radical: friends, read books,” Olena advises the children. “Serhiy and I host the Radio Khartia program “Kharkiv School of Romantics”, we talk there about what is hidden in books and how they support us today, find it on YouTube, it will help in preparation for the NMT”.
And in the evening the “Radio Khartia” team gathers guests for the program “Kharkiv Speaks”. They happily note that some of the teenagers who were at the morning event also came.
The evening program recreates on stage the atmosphere of Serhiy Zhadan’s author program on Radio Khartia. “It’s as if we removed the wall between the studio and the audience, so this is, in fact, a radio broadcast,” Serhiy says.
The program begins with private memories about the radio. “I’m from Luhansk myself, I remember winters in childhood well: minus twenty, school is canceled, but no one sits at home, everyone runs to play hockey, the stick freezes to your hands, but a celebration begins, a carnival begins. But in the evening at home everyone listened to the ‘brekhunets’, everyone listened to the radio.
And later, already during teaching practice, we picked apples in apple orchards near Vovchansk, and in the evenings fragments of information reached us on the radio — that something very important was happening in the country. We returned from practice, and there was already an independent Ukraine.”
The return of final independence is discussed further in the program. The first guest of the program in Vysokopillia, Yuliya Kuba, head of the medical service of the coastal guard battalion, says that in Kherson region, as in her native Kharkiv region, people are extremely hospitable and open: “To us, the military, they often offer free housing, and generally support us.”
Yuliya has been involved in military medicine practically since the beginning of the war, for 12 years now; she started her path in the volunteer unit “Hospitaliers”. The medic says that at that time there was no established system of wartime medicine, and they and their colleagues studied NATO protocols, including casualty evacuation. “In those years all those things worked for us, but now we have to create our own protocols, because we are dealing with a war that did not exist before. In particular, the ‘golden hour’ rule, in which a wounded person must be delivered to a hospital, is impossible for us; evacuation can last several days. We actively promote evacuation with the help of NRK, and we managed to pick up wounded even from already occupied territories.” Yuliya says she dreams of returning to Kherson region after the victory, to see its beauty without war.
The difficulties of her profession during wartime are also shared by the second guest, librarian Iryna Kapeliushnyk. Iryna says that during the occupation the book collections of the Vysokopillia community were effectively lost: some were destroyed by the occupiers, some were stolen. Serhiy Zhadan promises to call on Radio Khartia listeners and viewers to help the local library with books, since he himself for many years helped libraries in Luhansk and Donetsk (which are now also destroyed), and now helps Kharkiv region.
As in the Kharkiv studio, the program “Kharkiv Speaks” ends with a musical “Apogee”. “Zhadan and the Dogs” together with the audience sing songs that have long become kind of anthems of mutual support for the public: “Metro”, “Rohan” and, of course, the now legendary “Malvy”. And at the end everyone sings “Chervona Ruta” together and, of course, the national anthem of Ukraine. “In the front row there was a girl of about twelve; at our morning event she was catching the local school cat, during the anthem we began to smile at each other, and I realized that we will definitely return to Vysokopillia, there is certainly someone to work for here,” says Radio Khartia’s executive director Ivanna Skyba-Yakubova.
“Radio Khartia — the radio of resistance and love, ” Serhiy Zhadan reminds. “So listen to us, talk with us, share your stories, let’s resist and love together.”
You can listen to Radio Khartia around the clock on the website radiokhartia.com, and watch video programs on the Radio Khartia YouTube channel.