Semeniwka is located directly on the border with Russia. The Ukrainian place is repeatedly shot at. But there is no more money for reconstruction. Many have nothing left than to leave their homeland.
The blue sky and the radiant sun form a strange contrast to the destroyed facades. In the small town of Semeniwka in the northeast of Ukraine, around 8,000 people lived before the war. Only a narrow forest strip separates it from the Russian border.
It is a life like on a powder barrel, says Mayor Serhij Dedenko. “Usually the shelling comes first and then, if at all, we can trigger the alarm. If Russia fires from the border, there is no warning. There is no time for us to warn people. This is the worst: we are never sure.”
Dedenko goes over the central square to his office in the administration building – or what is left of it. The upper floors are completely destroyed, the windows on the ground floor are nailed with chipboard. “See here, on the square, these impacts? These were Shahe-drones. Others came from grenades. All types of ammunition that fly in this war have ended up here.”
The company in the town hall continues, somehow. However, a reconstruction on a large scale is not to be considered – the risk is too great that everything will be destroyed tomorrow.
Semeniwka's mayor Serhij Dedenko understands those who pull away. But he wishes to return at some point.
Declared as a combat zone
In March the city hit another blow: Semeniwka is now officially considered an active fighting zone. This means that there are no longer any state funds for repairs. Aid organizations also keep your distance – the situation is too insecure for many volunteers who help in Ukraine with reconstruction.
What remains are international donations for building materials. This is how people try to patch their city. Tension plates, planning and cement plates: In Semeniwka, they are now part of daily needs and are no less important than bread or drinking water.
“Here is the whole stack of roof plates. We are distributing them this week,” explains Mayor Dedenko. “If something happens, a long line immediately forms. Some come by car, others get the material brought home. Somehow we have to go on.”
Commission takes on the damage
A small group of neighbors gathers just a few minutes away from the travel, in front of a multi -storey apartment block. You know each other, help each other. Raisa Usowa lives here with her husband, her children live on neighboring road.
She asks in, goes ahead through the stairwell to the first floor. “The window has flown out over there. You don't see anything without a flashlight. We then got a tarpaulin and covered it ourselves,” says USOWA.
The two -room apartment is in the half -dark. Here too, plastic plastic dampens the sunlight. The impact came in early January, in a late evening. The pressure wave burst the windows. “We were so afraid,” says USOWA. “The window, the curtains, the houseplants. Everything has flown to us. Even the balcony on the other side of the apartment is broken. A commission then came over and took the damage.”
“For us there is no money for the time being”
The family submitted an application for compensation, as many are currently doing. A year after the start of the Russian major invasion, the state had launched a digital aid program: Upload photos of the damage, submit an application, wait for a payment. Check the information used on site. Only: the funds are limited, the requirements are strict.
“For the time being, there is no money for us, we are now considered an active fighting zone. But this is our apartment. Our property is not wanting to go here. Above all with our pension – nobody is waiting for us elsewhere.”
More and more pull away
Just like USOWA, less and less think. Families move away, the older ones are particularly left behind. “I know people who only moved here from small villages because it was safer. Now they are gone. Have bought a house elsewhere. It's quieter.”
Only understandable, Mayor Dedenko reacts. His sound is calm, factual. In order to accommodate people with destroyed houses, the city has small module houses set up, financed by donations. It is a provisional, nothing more.
Often people get a certificate, a kind of voucher with which you can buy an apartment elsewhere in Ukraine. It is a necessary step. For Semeniwka, however, it means above all the loss of his citizens.
“We have to rebuild”
“Many of our people got such a certificate and have moved away. Most of the time they don't come back. If you build something else elsewhere, you stay there too,” said Dedenko. “This is a disadvantage for us. We lose our people. The future of a community – but they are people. I hope that they will return. But we have to rebuild it.” He has many ideas, but initially only on paper.
The only thing that is currently being created in Semeniwka are small protective rooms made of concrete, on sidewalks, between houses. Keller are too far away when the attacks come without warning. Hospitals, schools, cultural centers, apartments – everything will have to wait, says Dedenko. Until the war is over.
