The Saltivka neighborhood, in Kharkivlives covered in fear and destructiondue to the impacts of missiles that fall there week after week. A row of multi-story popular buildings with sagging roofs. The charred Barabashova market. The hospital next to a Russian Orthodox church. And then houses, bars, shops, small stores, schools and sports centers, carry the scars of a war that intensifies at night, when very few lights remain intrepidly on, the streetlights are turned off and the curtains of the houses are closed, in an attempt to avoid any flash that could attract attention. Only a few lost cars then make their way through the streets like fireflies wandering through dim streets.
These scenes, witnessed by this journalist the last time at the end of June, have continued to be repeated since then, according to those who remain there and confirm the air raid alarms that sound with tragic constancy. There is not peace for Saltivka, a neighborhood that the war has turned for months into the most dangerous area of this Ukrainian city. For months now, in some parts — particularly those further north — the authorities have been recommending their citizens to leave, but many, too many, have not done so. They live like this everyday panic in this city, the second most important in Ukraine, which continues to be targeted by a professional Army, the Russian, which fires at a short distance from the Ukrainian, supported by the population.
“Hardly anything standing”
It is not the only place suffering the damage caused by the war in Ukraine, a conflict that is now six months since its inception on February 24. Similar snapshots, with greater or lesser intensity, are also replicated in the many anonymous villages in the rural areas of the Kharkov region, in the areas of Donetsk still disputed between Ukraine and Russia, and in the south of the country, in particular in the region of Odessa Y Nikolayev, a city where they suffer from water problems due to the pipes that they once shared with occupied Jersón. “Some local farmers are resigned that there is almost nothing left of their farms,” says Yuri, a teacher and interpreter from Odessa.
No definitive data on the total damage caused by the clashes in the country; it is a balance that grows with the passing of days, as more commercial buildings, houses, highways, bridges, airports, industrial plants and other destroyed infrastructure in all the country. The latest figure offered by the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Denys ShmyhalHas been of $750 billion that will be needed for the reconstruction when the conflict ends, he told a symposium in July in Lugano; others give higher figures. The World Health Organization has already counted, in its regularly updated analysis, some 400 attacks on hospitals and other medical centers.
The kyiv School of Economics has also given figures in its August study. According to this source, 105,200 cars, 43,700 agricultural machines, 764 kindergartens, 1,991 shops, 634 cultural centers and 114,700 houses have been damaged or destroyed since the beginning of the Russian invasion. The result of this will be a winter what is advertised very hard even in the villages located in the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, where the departure of the Russian forces in March has left behind a bleak picture, with some areas completely razed to the ground and buildings irretrievably demolished. And the international aid to rebuild seems to not be coming as fast as the militaryin this country that also in 2021 was still ranked 122 (out of 188) in the perception index the corruption of International Transparency.
prefabricated houses
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“In towns like Moschun, what we have done is start putting up small modular prefabricated containers so that the most affected inhabitants can spend the winter. You have to be careful because they are little ones and the Cold air can get in quickly,” says Sergii Zavadskyi, a member of the Ukrainian chapter of the Rotary Foundation, one of the private organizations that has been involved in helping people whose homes were destroyed in the kyiv region. “It’s not much, the funds they are taking time to arrive, because in the summer everything has come to a standstill. But still it is a small help, waiting for a reconstruction that may take 1 or 2 years,” says Zavadskyi.
According to the country’s authorities, around 3.5 million people are today homeless in Ukraine, that is, they have been left without a house to live in. Others have fled and have not yet returned, while the destruction of schools it also threatens to leave hundreds of children without face-to-face classes. Organizations like Human Rights Watch they have also pointed out cases, in different areas of the country, in which both Russian and Ukrainian troops have placed their forces in populated areas causing damage to civilian buildings. They are witnesses, they too, of a conflict that has already killed more than 5,000 civilians and has injured more than 7,000, according to the UN, and will sink the Ukrainian GDP in a Four. Five% in 2022, according to the World Bank forecast.