The unmistakable boom of shelling echoes around the bomb-scarred buildings of west-central Kharkiv as the mayor of Ukraine's one-time Soviet capital prepared for his interview. "The Russian aggressors try to make out of Kharkiv a city that is pitiable, similar to the ones they have in Russia," Igor Terekhov tells AFP in a cafe in the centre of the country's second city. "But they won't manage to do it." SOUNDBITES