the very slow reconstruction of Borodyanka, a Ukrainian town 80% destroyed

40 kilometers from kyiv, the town of Borodyanka was 80% destroyed in March 2022, at the start of the war. Several aid programs make it possible to rebuild its infrastructure, but progress is slow.

How to help Ukraine rebuild? This is the subject of an international conference, which is being held on Tuesday June 11 and Wednesday June 12 in Berlin, Germany. The aim is to help kyiv keep its economy afloat and, in the longer term, rebuild its infrastructure. Example in the town of Borodyanka, 40 kilometers northwest of kyiv, massively bombed in spring 2022. It is one of the most destroyed towns in the country.

Gutted buildings and piles of rubble. In this town, there were 13,000 inhabitants before the war, 9,000 Today. It was 80% destroyed. At 74, Olga lost her apartment in the bombings. At the entrance to the city, in the rubble, the old lady is looking for a door to her new home. “People lived here, she says, they were happy, there was life! And now look around us, everything is empty. I’m even afraid to look, there are only crows.”

Further on, in the main street, scaffolding, certain buildings have been repaired, work has started to repair the pipes. Wheelbarrow in hand, Ivan, 80, cleans and repairs. The retiree lives in a small house, bombed several times in March 2022. “Thanks to volunteers, the roof is repaired, the windows have been changed, the doors too. If you want, I’ll show you how we were bombed!”

Inside, shards of glass still mark the kitchen door frame. On the ground, Ivan lifts a brand new corner of linoleum to reveal his cellar, “Putin’s bunker”, he laughs. It was here, in this dark corner of barely 12 m2, that the old man lived with his daughter, his granddaughter and another family for two weeks when everything had collapsed.

Wounded in the head and evacuated, Ivan ended up returning to Borodyanka where several programs, including United 24, an initiative of President Zelensky, are financing the renovations. But according to Georgiy Erko, the city’s former mayor, in office at the time of the occupation, it is impossible to move forward quickly. “Alerts are dailyhe says. Cities like kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv are bombed. The enemy is not stopping and people need to rebuild their homes. Not only in the kyiv region, but throughout the territory.” According to the former councilor, it would take another three to four years to rebuild Borodyanka.