In the Kharkhiv region, it is only now – months of intense Russian bombardment down the line – that Ukrainian electrical engineers can begin reconnecting the power grid. FRANCE 24's Andrew Hilliar, Elena Volochine and Abdelkader Dermas visited a village near the front line where barely a single home was left undamaged during the fighting.
Barely 10km from the Russian border, these electrical engineers are trying to repair a substation that was damaged in a bombardment.
This entire zone was on the front line, until the Ukrainian army recaptured it in September. For more than five months, villages here suffered heavy bombardment.
Every day, engineers with the Kharkiv region's electrical supplier put their lives on the line in freezing conditions to bring power back to the area.
Oleksandr Ganous is one of these engineers. "Given the current weather conditions, in areas where we're able to, we'll only be able to fix the electrical distribution networks closer to summer. A lot of our infrastructure is near the Russian border. We can't go there because the Ukrainian military won't let us," he says.
In this village, two thousand people lived here before the war, but now there are only twenty five remaining. They live amid the ruins and survive with the help of humanitarian aid sent from abroad.
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