War in Ukraine: the street is being restored after the bombing

The smell of bodies decaying under the rubble no longer hangs in the air. The sappers came and went. The school is back in operation, although classes have been reduced power outage. The hairdresser is open.

But Raisa Yakovenko, a 61-year-old pensioner, still flinches at the thud of the refrigerator door closing, a faint echo of the Russian bombs that damaged her apartment and devastated the village during the opening days. almost 9 month war in Ukraine.

Woman holding a kitten in the hallway

Raisa Yakovenko, 61, lives in an apartment heavily damaged by Russian attacks on Borodyanka at the beginning of the war. The pensioner lives alone with her kitten Javelinka, named after anti-tank missiles used by Ukrainian forces.

(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)

“My problems are not so serious,” she said. “You can live without windows.”

The city of Borodyanka was among the first victims of the invasion, becoming a transit point for Russian convoys. rolls southeast towards the capital, Kyiv, about 35 km. Its 14,000 residents have paid a heavy price for their resistance: scorched, ruined buildings stand next to those left untouched, as if a tornado has swept through the city.

“They didn’t expect us to fight back,” said Roman Rudnichenko, 57, who works as the city’s chief architect.

People in a littered yard against the background of a fresco

A mural by British street artist Banksy depicting a judo match, one of several works the artist has done on Borodyanka and other hard-hit places in Ukraine.

(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)

Now, nearly seven months after Russian forces ended a brief but brutal occupation, Borodianka has become a symbol of a certain daring resilience, albeit one that is occasionally severely tested.

Foreign dignitaries regularly travel from Kyiv to view and take pictures against the backdrop of the blackened high-rise buildings. This week, a British street artist known as Banksy unveiled a signature stencil-style mural on the wall of a badly damaged apartment building depicting a gymnast performing a handstand on a pile of rubble.

“Borodyanka, Ukraine,” read the caption on the photo of the artist. Instagram account.

However, many locals are somewhat tired of their manly image. Only slightly more than half of the city’s population has returned, and many of their homes are uninhabitable. With winter approaching, residents and local authorities are rushing to make repairs to get through the cold months.

In a sense, Borodianka is Ukraine in a narrow sense. As more and more territory in the south and northeast recaptured by Ukrainian troopsthe receding wave of occupation leaves behind a landscape of destroyed cities, towns and villages.

The latest of these is the strategic southern city of Kherson, which Russian troops abandoned last weekdestroying vital infrastructure on the go. President Volodymyr Zelensky, greeted enthusiastically by locals during his visit to Kherson on Monday, hailed its residents as heroes and vowed to restore essential services as soon as possible.

But across the country, recovery is a fraught and difficult undertaking.

With national reconstruction costs already estimated at a staggering $350 billion, and with almost a third of the country’s 44 million residents displaced within Ukraine or fled abroad, Ukrainians are constantly faced with sharp reassessments: stay or go? Restore or start over somewhere else? Cling to memories or put them aside?

“We are part of the historical process,” said the architect Rudnichenko. But we still don’t know how this story will end.

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The street with the simple name Central – Central – crosses Borodyanka in a straight line, dividing in half quarters of modest wooden or brick houses, giving way to forests and fields. It is surrounded by large apartment buildings, many dating back to the Soviet era, punctuated by small businesses, a post office and a police station.

Even in its pre-war heyday, the street might seem plain to outsiders. But for 34-year-old Olga Drabey, who has lived all her life at 306 Central Street, her third-floor apartment represents “everything—my whole childhood, marriage, motherhood, everything that is dear to me.”

Olga Drabey, 34, has lived all her life on Central Street.

Olga Drabey, 34, says the third-floor apartment she had to leave after the Russian attack represents “everything – my whole childhood, marriage, motherhood, everything that is dear to me.” She hopes to eventually return home.

(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)

More than eight months after the building was bombed in early March, a block of 50 apartments has been found structurally sound, but still without electricity or running water. Explosions knocked out dozens of windows; the fire left the stairwells charred. Some residents gave up hope of returning before winter by sealing their doorways with giant styrofoam squiggles.

Drabey and her husband, along with their 7-year-old son, hope to return soon from cramped temporary housing nearby. But her parents and 89-year-old grandmother, who lived with them before the war, may not be reunited with them. War turmoil is already too much.

On a dank afternoon last week, Drabay showed visitors the apartment’s cold, cluttered rooms. The TV set and most household appliances were stolen. Her son had already outgrown the little crib left in the corner. The once carefully manicured garden behind the building was a tangle of weeds and bare tree branches.

Children play in a dark corridor

Children play in the dark corridors of a secondary school in the center of Borodyanka. October 10, 2022 Electricity is switched on only from time to time.

(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)

“We are lucky – we are alive, and we have somewhere to return,” Drabey said. “Life will return to our city. It will just be different than before.”

A little further down the street, at 367 Tsentralnaya, Yakovenko, a pensioner, lives alone with her kitten, Javelinka, named after the anti-tank missiles that helped Ukrainian forces hold back a Russian offensive against Kyiv. The damage to her building came when rockets hit the military enlistment office across the street in early March, nearly flattening it, along with a nearby greengrocer’s and pharmacy.

Unexpected sounds still unnerve her, she said, but stroking the Javelinka helps her calm down.

With a broken window, Yakovenko made do with plastic and cardboard covers all spring and summer, until the state paid for the installation of new glass. She was still waiting for the door to replace the one that had been blown off its hinges.

She considered herself lucky. Like almost everyone on Central, she knew the story of Ivan Simoroz, a young policeman who had once lived on the street.

Children playing on the carousel

Children in Borodyanka play in the shadows of buildings destroyed by the Russian invasion more than eight months ago.

(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)

Feb. On December 26, two days after the Russian invasion, a 26-year-old man was on duty at the station when his family home was bombed. His wife, mother, father, brother and grandmother were killed on the spot; his one-month-old little daughter, Polina, died shortly thereafter in the hospital.

“Sometimes the sadness is so great,” Yakovenko said.

On the first floor of the building, 73-year-old Galina waved from the window to departing visitors. She cracked it open to explain that her own apartment down the street had been destroyed, so she rented an apartment here, cold but generally untouched.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I have two blankets!”

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By a cruel coincidence, almost all Borodyans mobilized for military service are deployed at the site of a particularly fierce ongoing battle, in the city of Borodino. Bahmuthundreds of miles from the eastern front line.

Men in uniform carry blue and yellow Ukrainian flags down the street.

The funeral procession of the soldier Alexei Kozlenko continues along Central Street in Borodyanka.

(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)

One day last week, the body of a dead soldier, 32-year-old Aleksey Kozlenko, was brought home. As the funeral procession moved up Central, a group of women who had gathered for humanitarian aid from the municipality turned and knelt in front of the coffin.

“Every day it seems like we are burying someone,” said architect Rudnichenko.

Further down Central, at the Flower Cafe, which sells plants and bouquets as well as food, owner Tatyana Litvinenko, 33, served panini and coffee. Things were moving slowly, she said.

The cafe sits across from a pair of often-photographed nine-story buildings with blackened facades, across the street from a Banksy mural on an adjacent building. Litvinenko said that it was understandable that strangers would come to see these things; even she is sometimes shocked by the sooty, huge husks in which so many of her clients once lived.

Cafe with food painted on the side, opposite buildings blackened by missile strikes

Tatyana Litvinenko’s “Flower Cafe” has resumed work on Borodianka. It sits opposite a pair of often-photographed nine-story buildings with blackened facades, and Litvinenko said it was understandable that outsiders would come to see them. “I just wish more of them were ordering food!” she said.

(Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times)

“When people come to watch, I just wish more of them would order food!” she said.

The small, bright café she and her husband had been running for ten years was badly damaged by the bomb, but since it’s a modular kiosk, it was easy to replace. This was not the case in the apartment next door. Hiding near Borodyanka with their young son, the couple spotted the smoking ruins of their home on news footage.

She shook her head.

“At first we were shocked and wept, but we passed this stage,” she said. “Now we’re just laughing.”