Borodyanka: Valentina Klymenko tries to return home as soon as possible to escape the darkness of her war-damaged home outside the Ukrainian capital. She goes to visit friends, goes to the well for water or finds a place to charge her phone.
70-year-old Klimenko then returns alone to an apartment that used to be noisy and full of life. Now she is greeted by dim, damp rooms instead of the voices of her great-grandchildren.
Klymenko rarely cooks. She drinks fruit compote and eats canned tomatoes, which she prepared last year, so she doesn’t waste gas in her portable stove. She falls asleep early, but is unable to sleep for a long time.
Her thoughts revolve around one question: “What will happen to my house?”
At the end of March the Russian troops withdrew from the area around Kyiv. But according to the head of the Kyiv regional administration, Oleksiy Kuleba, they left behind 16,000 damaged residential buildings in the Bucha region, where Borodanka is located.
The most affected street in Borodyanka, a city with a population of over 12,000, was Tsentralna, still called Lenin Street less than a decade ago. One of the houses on this street belongs to Klymenko.
a . shockwave from Russian air raid Eyewitnesses say two bombs struck a building across the street, which set fire to Klimenko’s five-story apartment building.
Apartments on the upper floors of Klymenko’s building burned down. After four months, there is no electricity, water or gas. Some residents lost everything and ended up on the road without any means to find a new home.
“I had a sofa here and armchairs here. But now there are just waterfalls, ”said Tatiana Solohub, pointing to the black walls of her house. There is nothing left but a few small enamel cups and the suffocating smell of ash.
Solohub’s swanky apartment is located a few floors above Klimenko. They moved into the building 36 years ago at the same time it was just built.
“And now, at 64, I am forced to be homeless,” Solohub said. Unlike Klymenko, she doesn’t even have a damaged apartment to live in. Its completely gone.
Solohub now houses a camp for people displaced by shipping containers. It was established in Borodanka with the support of the Polish and Ukrainian governments. There are other such camps in the Kyiv and Lviv regions. It has become a popular way to house people who cannot return to their homes.
There are 257 people living in the Borodyanka camp – 35 percent of them are old residents. Kostyantin Morozko, the representative of the military administration in the Buka region and the coordinator of the shipping container camp, said he expects to add two containers for 160 people this month. But even that is not enough. They have 700 families waiting for them.
Morozco expects the temporary camp to last through the fall, winter and spring. He believes there is a 90 percent chance that people will remain by then. The first cold weather is expected in early September.
Camp residents are adjusting to the idea of a longer stay. They bring a bouquet of fresh flowers to the shared kitchen every couple of days, the shelves are filled with their belongings, and the tables in their “private” rooms are covered with colorful tablecloths.
But living conditions are challenging for older people. Solohub shares a small, narrow room with plastic walls with two others. He doesn’t have many things on his shelf. He didn’t get a chance to save his belongings.
Due to the scorching heat, it becomes difficult to stay in my temporary home all day long. So she often goes to rest in a small garage with metal walls and no windows near her house.
“I have a private space in this garage, and no one bothers me. I can’t breathe in that plastic house,” Solohub said. ‘We want our homes to be restored so we have space to invite our children and grandchildren.
Klymenko is glad that her apartment didn’t burn down completely. But she does not know when her granddaughter and great-grandson will come again. They left for Lithuania in the first days of the Russian invasion. There, the granddaughter of Klimenko managed to find housing and a job.
“It’s complicated for kids in Lithuania. They don’t know the language. It’s hard for them at school. It’s hard for them in kindergarten. It’s hard not to be in their own country. But where can they come back?” Klimenko asked with tears in his eyes.
She also lived in Lithuania for several months after being evicted from her basement the day after the building caught fire. One of the few things she took with her was her great-grandson’s blanket, which she used to protect herself from the cold.
But Klymenko felt uncomfortable outside Ukraine, so she returned to the only place where she could at least partially regain her past life.
Now only she and a neighbor of the same floor live in the five-storey building. It is bearable in the summer, but the autumn chill will be challenging. His great-grandson’s blanket is lying by his bed.
“I am staying. And I will be. And I do not know what will happen next,” said Klymenko.
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