There are certain regions of the world that seemed destined by the cruel caprice of geography and chance to be perennial battlegrounds. Often these ravaged lands lay at the crossroads of imperial interests, as in the case of Afghanistan or Poland, which have been so frequently trampled by armies going this way or that, or else they are simply plagued by perennially unstable governance or roiling ethnic conflict. Sometimes, however, it is the peculiar logic of military operations that brings violence to the same place, again and again. One such notorious sufferer is the great industrial city of Kharkov, in northeastern Ukraine.