Sporadic, slow rebuilding deepens wounds of Ukrainian town bombed by Russia

Days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a 500-kilogramme high-explosive bomb dropped from a fighter jet collapsed a section of Mariya Vasylenko’s apartment building.

During the March 1, 2022, attack that levelled or damaged dozens more houses in this once-tranquil town, 40 kilometres (25 miles) northwest of Kyiv, Vasylenko and her neighbours were hiding in an ice-cold basement.They rushed outside to see how the heatwave turned the air blue, melted snow and ignited cars, leafless trees and frozen blades of grass around the building.

“Have you ever seen hell? That’s what it was,” Vasylenko, 80, told Al Jazeera.

Disoriented and deafened, she could not find her daughter Olena, a 41-year-old nurse, and her son-in-law Serhiy Khukhro, a 37-year-old construction worker, who were hiding in the basement under the collapsed section.

Their crushed bodies remained in the flooded basement while Vasylenko was evacuated to central Ukraine with their young children, Milena and Bohdan.Meanwhile, Russian soldiers moved into Vasylenko’s apartment for a month, leaving rubbish, excrement and graffiti with Soviet symbols, and plundering all valuables when Moscow ordered a retreat from around Kyiv and northern Ukraine.‘She doesn’t smile any more’
Weeks later, Vasylenko returned to Borodyanka to bury what was left of Olena and Serhiy.

Her grandchildren were sent to safety in Poland. She could not bear to tell Milena about her parents’ deaths for more than a year until they returned to Ukraine.

Milena is 12 now. She returned to Borodyanka with Vasylenko – and is deeply traumatised.“She doesn’t smile any more,” Vasylenko said, sitting on a bench next to a community centre where she and her neighbour sing in an amateur choir.

“She can’t bear to see parents hugging and kissing her classmates after school because her mum and dad never will,” the 79-year-old neighbour, Hanna Ryashchenko, told Al Jazeera.

Both women and their relatives live in tiny rooms in a dormitory donated by Poland with communal bathrooms and kitchens.

Excavators started removing the debris from around Vasylenko’s building only two weeks ago.

From hell to limbo
At least 300 civilians were killed in Borodyanka, according to survivors, Ukrainian officials and human rights groups.

Russian forces bombed Borodyanka even though it never hosted a military base or plants producing weaponry.“I preferred to remain at home and starve,” Volodymyr Robovyk, a 69-year-old retired factory worker, told Al Jazeera.

Most of the trapped civilians, including children, were buried alive as they froze to death or starved.

Only one woman managed to save a family of eight by sneaking food and water into a tiny crevice at night.

Fifty-five apartment buildings, hundreds of houses, shops and offices have been destroyed or damaged, rendering thousands homeless and jobless, officials said.

A slow restoration
A dozen apartment buildings have been fully restored or retrofitted with heat-saving padding, plastic doors and windows, residents say.

But many more remain untouched.

“They dug this hole and are doing nothing,” Robovyk said, pointing at a construction pit on the Tsentralnaya (Central) street once named after Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin.Behind the fence was a brand new excavator that tumbled into the pit and lay upside down.

Robovyk’s tiny, shell-damaged house was patched up by volunteers in the autumn of 2022, but the renovation of larger buildings is far from over.

“The end of reconstruction is December 2024,” a plastic sign on the side of Valentyna Illyshenko’s five-storey apartment building reads.

But the house is still encapsulated in scaffolding as workers finish covering it with heat-saving plastic that also hides bullet and shrapnel holes.