Yana Psariova was in her friend’s kitchen one morning two weeks ago, when she heard the familiar thunder of a Russian cruise missile passing overhead on its way to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.
Twice the 36-year-old has had to rebuild her life because of Vladimir Putin.
She fled her home city of Sloviansk in the eastern Donetsk region after Russian-backed separatists sought to take it in 2014.
Then, in the early hours of 24 February last year, Psariova and her husband, Serhiy, awoke to the sound of explosions on the far side of the woods neighbouring their apartment block in Irpin, a commuter town on the edge of Kyiv.
The large windows of their bright and airy 10th-floor flat – a “dream home” into which she and Serhiy had moved just months before – offered the perfect vantage point to see black smoke billowing over the trees from the nearby Hostomel airport where Russian paratroopers were arriving in assault helicopters to take Ukraine’s capital from the north.
After frantically waking their three-year-old son, Mykyta, the couple ran from their home, driving west as fast as they could, not looking back.
It was just as well. Irpin, the scene of some of the most infamous clashes in the early weeks of the conflict, was only liberated from Russian control on 28 March.
An official survey has suggested three-quarters of the town’s buildings were “damaged” in the process, Psariova’s home included.
Her two-bedroom apartment is a blackened shell, its roof ripped clean off. Fire destroyed all the family’s possessions, licking into every crevice, burning the walls back to expose the candyfloss-like insulating material inside.
Psariova, who owns a lingerie firm with her husband, returned to Irpin in May. The kitchen from where she heard the missile a fortnight ago is in an apartment in an adjacent block. Her friends are yet to come back from the relative safety of western Ukraine and so it is somewhere to stay for now.
The plan is for her home to rise from the ashes. The fundraising organisation United24 was founded by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, last year as an alternative to international aid organisations accused of sitting on the money that had flowed in at the start of the war. It intends to pay for the rebuilding of 18 apartment blocks in the Kyiv commuter areas of Irpin, Borodianka, Hostomel, Buzove and Mila, allowing 4,237 people to return home. It will cost £17m. So far £15m has been raised.
It is a cause for hope – but the case of Psariova’s home encapsulates many of the difficulties facing Ukraine as the government seeks to rebuild in a war zone.
First of all, it is an optimistic thing to do. The war could swallow up Irpin again.
It is piecemeal. Psariova may get her apartment back but it will be in a community where basic services are still lacking. And what the local communities need is changing all the time. The Russians are targeting the electricity supply at the moment. Blackouts are a daily occurrence and so generators are being bought by the state. But the Kremlin may go for the water system next.
“How do you prioritise in an ever-changing environment?” asked Dr Tymofiy Mylovanov, the president of the Kyiv School of Economics. “By the time you want to set something up or you have a project, another town is under attack or another wave of refugees. And a lot of the damage is not fixable within a week or a month.”
It presents a quandary: should expensive and sustainable materials be used in the reconstruction, with the aim of building back better, or with so many left homeless is it better to spread the limited resources more widely at the risk of repeating the errors of postwar Germany, and build back ugly? “It depends on the benchmark [the standards expected], if we get the good benchmark in terms of funding [for each home] and in terms of quality, then the rest will follow,” Mylovanov said.
The initiative in the Kyiv region is also a drop in the ocean. Ukraine’s government estimates 150,000 residential buildings, 1,500 schools, half of the power system and more than 20,000km (12,400 miles) of roads have been damaged in one form or another. There have been almost 320,000 applications for compensation by homeowners, a number that will only grow.
The World Bank estimates the cost to Ukraine of the recovery and reconstruction as being $349bn (£283bn) but a new higher figure will be produced in March. It is a task akin to rebuilding a home as it burns.
Oleksandr Kubrakov, 40, has quite a job title: deputy prime minister for the restoration of Ukraine. Those problems are his problems – and last week one of his ministers was arrested on corruption charges.
The deputy minister of infrastructure, Vasyl Lozinskyi, was dismissed from his post having been accused of inflating the price of winter equipment, including generators, and allegedly siphoning off $400,000. He is under house arrest after about $38,000 in cash was reportedly found in his office. He has not commented.
Kubrakov, an economist with the look of a man with a lot on his mind, said Lozinskyi joined his team in December after a merger of departments, and described the arrest as a “shock for sure”. “My idea was to leave almost all the team from the previous ministry and just try to show them themselves, to show results,” he said. “But unfortunately, then, not such results we expected to be honest.”
His team are less diplomatic: “What a shit.”
Kubrakov added: “I think the most important thing is your reaction. I mean, because if you just try to cover up those things, this is not right. [Corruption] is everywhere. I mean, I saw last week a scandal in the United States of America, one was a guy from FBI worked for [the sanctioned Russian oligarch] Oleg Deripaska. Several weeks ago there was scandal in the European parliament [over Qatar]. So I mean, it’s happening. The most important thing is your reaction.”
A slew of deputy heads rolled last week, and Zelenskiy vowed old practices would not be allowed to return. The response from the White House and Brussels was to endorse the crackdown. That has not stopped the US government from sending in auditors to examine the books. “We will have a meeting this week,” said Kubrakov.
It could prove to be an important discussion. To this point, billions of dollars and euros have poured in but it has been chaotic, responding to ad hoc crises. “Yesterday [Thursday] was an important step because at the end of the previous year the G7 countries [the world’s biggest economies] agreed to a donor coordination platform which will start operations during this year. Basically it was like first kickoff meeting,” said Kubrakov.
A secretariat will be established to coordinate the supply of donations with the demands on the ground, allowing for planning and long-term thinking, he said.
For now, in response to all the challenges of rebuilding in a war zone, he says the priority is doing what is necessary just to keep going. It is not the time for a grand vision for a country reborn.
He expects to have up to $7bn to spend this year. Number one on his list of priorities is restoring the bridges in liberated territories. Temporary ones donated by countries such as Norway and France have been thrown across rivers but they have to be closed in inclement weather. Larger permanent structures are needed. “I think during this year, we will rebuild all the main bridges on all main roads in the occupied regions,” he said.
Then there is the task of constructing new railway lines with a gauge that allows European freight to easily come into Ukraine and for Ukrainian agricultural and steel exports to go the other way.
New border crossing points with Poland and Romania will be opened in recognition of Ukraine’s aspirations to be part of the European Union and to deepen ties with that economy.
Electricity supply is at the front of everyone’s mind. Last week Russia used hypersonic missiles that Ukraine’s air defences are unable to shoot down in order to take out key plants. Where the current system can be salvaged, repairs need to be made but Kubrakov says Ukraine will “start preparations and our works on creating a new protected grid”.
Providing communities with at least one working hospital and school is an urgent task.
The seizure of $450bn of the assets of the Ukrainian subsidiary of the Russian Sberbank will be used to finance a compensation scheme for those whose homes have been destroyed or are in need of repairs. “It’s symbolic, and it’s important,” said Kubrakov. The idea is that people will be compensated for the value of their home and that they can spend it on a new property anywhere in the country.
But everything is being done with the acknowledgment that it could be torn down again. Psariova in Irpin knows from bitter experience that nothing lasts for ever. Kubrakov said: “That’s why we’re focusing on the most critical things, because, for sure, we’ve taken into account that some bridges could be destroyed again. But without those bridges we won’t have a country. Because they’re critical for military supply for humanitarian corridors for our economy for supply and everything. We’re focusing on the most critical projects which are important just for survival.”
• This article was corrected on 1 February 2023 to correct a misspelling of Yana Psariova’s name in the caption of the main image.
