The village of Shevchenkove wants its villagers back. There is one significant problem: very many of its buildings do not have windows.
From the early days of the war, up until November last year when the Russian forces were pushed over to the other side of the Dnipro River, Shevchenkove and its surrounding hamlets in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson were on the frontline.
The mayor was taken prisoner and its local people terrorised by hourly shelling. Many fled. Then the Russians withdrew. While the danger of artillery and rockets remained, many were motivated to return home.
There are 11,000 people in the region now but that is still 5,000 down from peacetime. In Shevchenkove, where the prewar population was 3,200, there are 2,200 residents today. This is not enough for Oleg Pylypenko, 37, the mayor, who was released in a prisoner swap. He wants everyone back. But the remaining stumbling block is clear: glass, or rather the lack of it.
People want to rebuild their lives and homes but it will take time, and to do so they need to at least be in the village.
Shevchenkove’s largest buildings, including a former orphanage with two dormitories, could accommodate those coming back on a medium-term basis but they no longer have windows and, even if they did, it would probably not be long before they were smashed again.
The windows of a damaged school in Kotlyareve, Mykolaiv oblast, are covered in plywood and thin layers of plastic. Photograph: Zachary Tarrant/Insulate Ukraine
It may be hot under the August sun but Ukrainian winters can be cruel and cold, with Russia likely to renew its attack on electricity supplies.
It is a problem writ large across the country. Take a tour of almost any city, town or village in the east or south and the abundance of gaping windows is striking.
A glass frame can smash as a result of an explosion a significant distance away. An incalculable number have been broken and, when refitted, they will in many cases be smashed again.
In Shevchenkove, one in three of the buildings were destroyed and half were damaged in some way. That is a lot of broken glass.
A range of conditions both global in nature and peculiar to Ukraine have left the country struggling to reglaze, especially when it promises to be a rather repetitive process.
The price of construction materials around the world has shot up as a result of the increased energy costs caused by the war.
Then there is the Turkish earthquake that has swallowed up glass supplies in recent months. But Ukraine was also particularly ill-equipped to deal with a sudden, and repeated, shattering of its windows.
After the country achieved independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were 10 factories producing sheet glass. Since then – and conspiracy theories abound – they have one by one been shut down.
Ukraine had become almost entirely dependent on producers in Belarus and Russia despite having an abundance of raw materials.
The final sheet glass factory in Ukraine,…
2023-08-20 09:25:57
Post from www.theguardian.com
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