AFTER Viktor Yanukovych, who was then president, fled Ukraine in February 2014, Russian flags began appearing around the Lenin statue in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Pro-Russian activists clashed with supporters of the Maidan revolution, and some spoke of a “Kharkiv People’s Republic”. But while separatism caught fire in Donetsk and Luhansk, it faltered in Kharkiv. Ukrainian nationalists felled the Lenin statue last autumn, leaving only a shoe. Sergei Yangolenko, commander of the Kharkiv-1 national-guard battalion, says the days when the city might have joined the rebels are over. He keeps Lenin’s giant ear in his office as a trophy. Nonetheless, Kharkiv, just 40km (25 miles) from the Russian border, remains tense. Dozens of bombings in recent months have unsettled the city. Ukrainian authorities say the attacks are part of a Russian terror campaign. The leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic has threatened to come for Kharkiv, where, he says, supporters “are waiting for us”. The governor, Ihor Rainin, says he spends three-quarters of his time on security issues.

In late February a blast at a parade commemorating the Maidan anniversary left four dead. The following week two landmines blew up a local battalion commander’s car, landing him and his wife in hospital. They consider themselves lucky. “We should be cut in half, two corpses,” says the commander, Andrei Yangolenko, who is Sergei Yangolenko’s brother. Other targets have included military installations, infrastructure, volunteer offices and even a bar popular with pro-Ukrainian activists. The latest bomb hit a memorial on Tuesday. A Russian suspected of organising the bombing was arrested.

Many in Kharkiv favour closer ties with Russia, but few support separatism, says Pavel Tishenko, the leader of a pro-Russian labour group. The brutality of the war in the Donbas has shattered any illusions of a peaceful break-up. The local security services have arrested 700 people accused of being pro-Russian operatives. The leaders of Kharkiv’s anti-Maidan movement last spring have taken refuge in Russia. A group calling itself the “Kharkiv Partisans”, based across the border in Belgorod, has been tied to the recent bombings.

Meanwhile a separate battle is under way between Ukraine’s central government and Kharkiv’s mayor, Gennady Kernes, a former ally of Mr Yanukovych. Mr Kernes played both sides of Kharkiv’s divide a year ago. He barely survived an assassination attempt that has left him in a wheelchair. Mr Kernes insists that Kharkiv is a Ukrainian city, yet he refuses to call Russia an “aggressor nation”, the Ukrainian government’s official term. Ukraine’s general prosecutor has opened a case against Mr Kernes for kidnapping and torturing pro-Maidan activists, charges which Mr Kernes says are politically motivated. Ukraine’s interior minister, Arsen Avakov, also hails from Kharkiv and is a longtime rival. Nonetheless, Mr Kernes plans to run for re-election this autumn. He will get support from voters longing for stability. If he is convicted, it could upend the city’s fragile equilibrium.

The biggest challenges for Kharkiv are economic ones. Serhiy Zhadan, a local activist and writer, says financial insecurity worries people more than terrorism does. As elsewhere in Ukraine’s economy, Kharkiv’s big enterprises are built to trade with Russia. Reorienting them would require capital investment that is difficult to attract in a country at war. Lower quality combined with proximity make Kharkiv’s products more competitive in Russia than in the European Union. As business with Russia has contracted, Kharkiv has been hit especially hard: exports fell by two-fifths last year. Frustration with the new government is mounting.

Ukraine’s economic pain creates openings for pro-Russian political parties. Neither Mr Yanukovych’s Party of Regions nor its voter base has disappeared entirely. In last year’s parliamentary elections, the Party of Regions’ rebranded successor, the Opposition Bloc, carried most of the eastern regions, including Kharkiv. National polling data now show the Opposition Bloc outpacing the People’s Front party of Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the prime minister, which won last year’s elections and has borne the blame for the country’s continuing economic woes. President Petro Poroshenko’s party finishes first in those same polls. But most voters are undecided. So too is Kharkiv’s future.