A white neon sign and gold string lights draw in passers-by on the edge of a war zone. Down a set of stairs and past a small entryway with wall of a mirrors lies the Slot Games casino.
It is dimly lit, windowless and has an open floor plan and the lights of more than 20 slot machines and an electronic roulette table glint glinting off the mirror tiles on the ceiling.
Here about twenty men aged 30 to 50 sit silent and alone, three of them at slot machines marked “VIP” — for guests who visit and lose frequently, but have a monthly 2,206 hryvnia (£39) voucher for food, drinks and cigarettes. Others drink alcohol, slurping through a straw but never looking away from the game.
One patron of Slot Games casino in Kharkiv estimated that one in ten of its customers were refugees
ANNA CONKLING FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
Slot Games is one of four casinos in Kharkiv and is open from 8am to 9.30pm.
The man stationed at the host stand asks for my passport and for me to sign waivers for insurance purposes, all of which are in Ukrainian. “Am I signing away my soul to the devil?” I ask. “No, only God,” the man says with a laugh. “But most of the men here have already sold their souls to the devil.”
In 2009 casinos were made illegal in Ukraine and Russia in an attempt to control gambling addiction. However, illegal casinos still operated in Ukraine and in 2020 President Zelensky lifted the ban to reduce illegal gambling that still plagued the country. The new law legalised online gambling and allowed casinos to open in hotels to drive tourism.
President Zelensky’s gambling policies shifted with the outbreak of war
Now, for some in wartime Ukraine, they are answering a desperate need.
The unemployment rate in April was 16.8 per cent, and 17.9 per cent of Ukrainians are living below the poverty line, according to a report by the Centre for Economic Strategy, a Ukrainian non-governmental research body.
Still, men in the eastern city are frequenting casinos such as Slot Games, where a former administration worked. One, who asked only to be referred to by the name Artem, said that between 100 and 200 people visit every day now. Artem joined Slot Games at the end of 2021 and quit in March.
‘It’s gotten to the point of death threats’
Before the war most patrons were “intelligent guests”, Artem said. “Big players, calm, quiet, and peaceful. The people had money.” But many of those players have since moved to other areas of Ukraine or abroad.
“The quality of players started to fall gradually,” he said. “The number of players on the contrary somehow increased during the war. But at the same time there were fewer big players and it became, so to speak, a worse contingent.”
Most of these players, according to Artem, do not have a lot of money and are losing an average of 50,000 hryvnias (£971) a month. Their frustration can cause them to lash out at staff.
“There have been situations where it’s gotten to the point of death threats. We ask him to leave; if he doesn’t react well, we call the security button, that’s it. But mostly people just throw their emotions out and that’s it, leave,” Artem said.
He said that 5 to 10 per cent of those who attended Slot Games were internally displaced people coming from Kupyansk, Luhansk, Donetsk or Bakhmut. At times while checking their documents, Artem saw their addresses were homeless shelters in Kharkiv.
Throughout the war, soldiers fighting on Ukraine’s front lines have turned to online gambling and casinos, and some have developed addictions.
In recent months Zelensky has tried to block online gambling. On April 20 he signed a decree that restricted online gambling and banned it from the military while martial law is enforced. He barred members of the armed forces from visiting gambling institutions.
In the trenches and £10,000 down
Soldiers, though, do visit Slot Games. Some are so stressed that they use online betting services and casinos as a way to decompress.
Denis, 28, a former soldier who asked to be referred to only by his first name, said that he had been gambling for ten years and visiting casinos such as Slot Games. “Establishments just opened up in the city like that. I went in once, liked it, and that’s it, got hooked. There was some excitement. I wouldn’t say [the win] was a lot, but it was enough to get hooked,” he said.
Denis joined Ukraine’s military in 2016 and rose through the ranks to become commander of his company. After Russia invaded, he was sent to various front line positions in Kharkiv, the eastern Donbas and Luhansk regions, as well as southern Kherson and Mykolaiv.
Ukrainians fire a shell from a M777 howitzer on the front line of the Kharkiv region, 2022
GLEB GARANICH/REUTERS
“Many soldiers play online very often. It’s really addictive now, every second person does it, it’s massively done,” said Denis, who estimates that 60 per cent of his company used online gambling on the front lines and at military bases.
After intense battles, Denis said his battalion would often get an additional payment for their work, and frequently they would spend that on gambling. At times Denis would think that he might earn from the games he played, but then the money would be gone in a matter of minutes. At the beginning of 2024, Denis was discharged from the military after being struck by mortar shelling for a fourth time, but while in the army, he was gambling away large sums of money.
“It seemed to me that I was even in profit. But in the end I was constantly in the negative. At that time I didn’t really think about it, but now, if you think about it, [you think] damn, idiot,” he said.
He estimates that he lost 526,000 hryvnias (£10,230) during his time in the military, money that he desperately needs now because he has no work in Kharkiv or government payments for his time as a soldier. Now Denis is trying to stop gambling.
“There’s regret that in any case, I’m a fool to have lost such a sum. Now it would have been very helpful to me if I had invested in real estate, clothes, bought a car. I’m looking for work, but even if I had a part-time job, it would have helped, now I would have been better off,” he said. “I’m a hopeless player.”