Ukrainians take slow, wary steps to rebuild as war with Russia rages on

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In the centre of Irpin, a city synonymous with the destruction brought by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Lyceum of Bioresources and Nature Management is a symbol of how the country is recovering even as the war continues.

The high school, which had 342 students before the war, had its roof and gymnasium damaged and every one of its windows blown out by shelling in the first month of the war, when Irpin was the front line – where the Ukrainian army halted the Russian advance toward nearby Kyiv. The school is now whole again, thanks to $3.6-million in repairs funded by a consortium of international donors, including Canada.

The building’s windows remain covered with sandbags, and some of the brick walls still bear the scars of bullets, but otherwise the lyceum looks largely the same as it did before the invasion – other than a new bomb shelter that can accommodate all of its students and staff during the air strikes that are still a regular part of life here.

In-person teaching resumed in November, with 160 students attending class, and the rest – most of whom had fled Ukraine with their families at the start of the war – participating online. When The Globe and Mail visited earlier this month, 42 of the lyceum’s Irpin-based students were practising dances for their upcoming graduation ceremony.

“We see concrete steps toward how our city returns to normal,” said Natasha Khromchak, the school’s English teacher. “We see a lot of repair work. We see the life we had before returning day by day.”

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The top priority, for Ukraine and its allies in the West, remains winning the war that Russian President Vladimir Putin launched 16 months ago. But even with Russia still occupying about 15 per cent of Ukrainian territory and regularly launching missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, governments and charities are increasingly turning their attention to reconstruction.

Delegates from more than two dozen countries and international institutions will gather Wednesday and Thursday in London for this year’s Ukraine Recovery Conference, where they will try to map out the logistically difficult task of rebuilding a country while it’s still in the midst of a major war.

The World Bank estimated in March that the reconstruction of Ukraine will take a decade and cost US$411-billion – and that was before the June 6 destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam, which flooded dozens of towns, ruined thousands of hectares of rich farmland and wrecked a major hydroelectric power plant. But many Ukrainians believe it’s nonetheless time to begin the reconstruction.

“We cannot wait for Victory Day and then start to do something after,” said Serhiy Prytula, a popular comedian-turned-politician and civil-society activist whose eponymous foundation has raised more than US$160-million to buy drones, vehicles and other supplies for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. While the military fundraising will continue, Mr. Prytula and his foundation have started to shift some of their efforts to rebuilding.

“Why do we need to wait for something if we can help people right now and right here and just let them to stay on their land?” he asked in an interview last week at the Kyiv headquarters of his foundation.

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The London meeting is expected to see countries make new pledges of financial and humanitarian support. At last year’s conference in Lugano, Switzerland, Canada vowed “to help Ukraine build back better and emerge from this war even stronger.”

So far, Canada has been a laggard in delivering assistance. The Ukraine Support Tracker, which was created by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, measures Ottawa’s military, humanitarian and fiscal aid to Ukraine as equal to 0.2 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. That’s half the level of support from the United States and Britain and a much smaller fraction of what countries such as Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Norway – all of which share borders with Russia – have donated to Ukraine.

In terms of raw dollar amounts, the Kiel Institute ranks Canada as the sixth-biggest donor of military aid, fifth in terms of budget support to the Ukrainian government and eighth when it comes to humanitarian help.

Canada will be represented at the London conference by International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan, while the U.S. delegation will be headed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Mr. Prytula, who will not be attending the conference, called on delegates to avoid the temptation to donate money solely via the Ukrainian government or large international organizations and to instead partner with Ukrainian non-governmental organizations that are already working on the ground. “We are on the land. We understand what’s going on, we work hard in every region,” Mr. Prytula said. While it would be expected, he added, for the government to take the lead on large infrastructure projects – such as rebuilding the Antonovskiy Bridge, which was destroyed by Russian troops as they withdrew from Kherson – local NGOs and charities would be better positioned to assess smaller-scale priorities.

“For people in the south part of Ukraine, it’s more important to fix this bridge. But for 800 people near to Trostianets, it’s more important to have their medical clinic,” Mr. Prytula said, referring to a town in the eastern Sumy region that was also heavily damaged by fighting early in the war. “And that’s why I’m talking about synergy between Ukrainian civil society and our government and our donors from abroad. So people don’t wait 10 years for the rebuilding of a school or for the demining process. That’s why we need to work together.”

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So far, the lyceum in Irpin is one of the few islands of progress in a sea of destruction. A short drive from the school stands a row of houses with their roofs blown off and an obliterated apartment block that no one will ever live in again. A bright yellow Orthodox church is now pocked with grey cement patches used to fill blast holes. The Finance and Tax University, which produces civil servants, is a scorched mess. Irpin School No. 3, one of the biggest high schools in the city, is being rebuilt by UNICEF, but its reopening looks years away.

The city itself, which has been under complete Ukrainian control since April, 2022, is in far better shape than cities in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions, in the east and south, which suffered longer Russian occupations and are close enough to the front lines that it’s still too dangerous for reconstruction work to begin. The damage done to places such as Mariupol and Bakhmut, which both suffered prolonged Russian sieges before finally capitulating, is impossible to calculate.

In Irpin, they’re happy that the rebuilding work has started. Ms. Khromchak, the English teacher at the lyceum, watched with pride as the graduating class danced together to classical music and pop songs in the courtyard outside the patched-up façade of their school. It was possible to forget, for a moment, what the students and their shattered city had seen. But repairing the buildings and roads in places such as Irpin will never undo all the damage done.

“We try not to recollect those moments because the memories are so sad,” Ms. Khromchak said as the music came to an end. Many of the school’s students needed psychological help to deal with what they’d been through – and were still going through. “Sometimes, it’s really difficult not to cry,” Ms. Khromchak said. “So we try to think about a happy future for our students, who want to stay here and be in this country.”

With reporting by Steven Chase in Ottawa

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