Rising from the ruins

Kharkiv’s five star Palace Hotel was shattered by a direct Russian missile strike at the end of 2023. We went inside to see the damage - and the long journey to rebuild.

It was freezing inside the destroyed hotel: the sub zero temperatures outside had penetrated deep inside the walls, impregnating the entire place with an icy chill. We clattered through the deserted reception, past what had once been a function room, a battered white piano pushed into one corner, all mangled keyboard and crushed strings.

Surprisingly, one of the lifts was still operating, and we rode up to the tenth floor, where the missile had hit, just over a year earlier. It was a scene of horror, a huge hole gouged out of the ceiling and the floors below, jagged concrete and a tangle of wires suddenly visible in the glare of torchlight.

Kharkiv’s five star Palace Hotel was once the city’s fanciest place to stay, favoured by visiting journalists and politicians, boasting a full-service spa and “stunning views” over the city. Until December 30th 2023, that is, when a Russian Iskander-M missile slammed through several floors, one of several missile strikes in central Kharkiv that night which injured 28 people. The lobby was filled with debris, and windows were shattered: surrounding buildings were damaged too. The Russians claimed at the time that they had targeted military “decision making centres”. Ukraine roundly rejected that as “a painful fantasy of people living in a parallel reality”.

Olga is the hotel manager: she had been working that night and was thrown to the ground by the blast. She managed to get down to the basement parking area, where the few guests who had escaped the blast were sheltering, including a team from the German television channel ZDF.

We met Olga in the same basement area, where some construction workers were getting something to eat before going back to the Herculean challenge of putting the shattered hotel back together. She offered us tea and a small plate of biscuits and told us we could stop by any time for lunch. There was a small display table just outside the door, with jagged pieces of the Iskander and torn up concrete, remnants from that nightmarish night.

We tramped through some dark corridors, bookended by rubble. This was once the spa. This is where the sauna was. There was still a sign at the entrance to an interactive display dedicated to the 2012 Uefa Cup. “2012-Kharkiv, Forever”, it said. A workman clattered past, dragging a heaped wheelbarrow, clanking sharply on the uneven ground. We needed the torch again, even in mid morning: no light had penetrated there. The air smelt of emptiness and dust.

“Would you like to see some of the rooms? The Presidential Suite?” Olga asked, and we went up again in a lift on the other side of the building, away from where the missile hit. It was still bitterly cold, but the Presidential Suite was pristine, the carpet sparkling clean, the bed made, cushions plumped. It was more than slightly surreal, looking at the “stunning views” over the city, the skyline dominated by the iconic Derzhprom skyscraper, its windows boarded up after a bomb attack in October last year.

Olga carefully locked the door to the suite as we left, and led us down a long corridor to a bar with huge windows and a long balcony with panoramic views. The tables were neatly stacked, and the gold hexagonal light shades had been carefully dusted, waiting in vain for a happy hour which never arrived.

Rebuilding a five star hotel might not seem a necessity - especially in a city which still comes under almost daily Russian attack. But it is a symbol of renaissance, of the old peaceful life which everyone yearns for again. “I know, there is no light, this will not happen quickly”, Olga said as we crunched over the broken glass in the lobby on the way back outside. “But we continue, step by step. Step by step”.