April; new projects and old
Kharkiv Oblast
Since our last newsletter, we have completed work on a further selection of houses in Tsupivka, Kharkiv Oblast, following a huge Russian airstrike on the village in February, the first time the village was hit in two and a half years. The day after the strike, I called Zhenia, the head of the village, and asked what we could do, and he requested repairs. Similarly, our team of builders on the ground were all desperate to begin repairs as quickly as possible, once again proving the extent to which the process of rebuilding is as therapeutic as it is physical.
Earlier this month, we visited the village to look at the work. Honestly, the extent of the devastation after the strike was difficult to take in, especially having grown so attached to the village and its few remaining residents in that time. The emotional impact of such a huge strike was also palpable, with the quiet comfort that the residents had found since their liberation from Russian occupation in autumn 2022 shattered. Nonetheless, everyone we spoke to remained firm in their determination to stay in their homes come what may.
Even more so than the repairs themselves, what we were told again and again was that the fact that we were able to begin work so quickly, and to ensure so totally that the residents of the village knew that they were remembered and cared about, was what was really transformative for people. The fact that western attention has shifted away from Ukraine is no secret, and for people in a village in the far northeast of the country to be reminded that there are people in the UK, and across Europe, the USA, and Australia, who continue to think of them and care about them is hugely powerful.
Over the course of the past month, we have been gifted two plaques as thanks for our work, one from Tsupivka, and the other from Derhachi hromada, which Tsupivka is a part of. It means so much to us to have our work recognised in this way, and we are also very aware that these awards are not just ours, but belong to every single person who has remained committed to our work throughout these past three years. Thank you all.
Refugee housing
This week, we also went to Cherkasy Oblast, in central Ukraine, to visit the houses where we have been completing repairs there.
For the first two and a half years of the full-scale invasion, Serhii volunteered, evacuating hundreds, if not thousands, of residents from the towns and villages of Donetsk Oblast. He did this in the full knowledge that it was only a matter of time before he would be evacuating his own family, who lived in the village of Rozlyv, in the south west of the oblast. In autumn 2022, that moment finally arrived, and he began the process of moving his parents, grandparents, and siblings further west, abandoning their homes and the farm they had all spent their lives working on. Whilst in the village, loading up his van with possessions, neighbours began to approach him, begging him to take them too, not to abandon them. In the end, over the course of a month, he evacuated almost the entire village.
In February of this year, Serhii, who I met in spring last year in Kharkiv, contacted me to ask for help. He had spent all of his savings on three run-down old cottages in Cherkasy Oblast, to which he had moved twelve members of his extended family. The cottages were in an awful state, with no water or electricity, no bathrooms, no windows, holes in the roof, and various other problems. We provided him with an initial grant to begin repairs. In the six weeks since then, Serhii has begun the repairing of the water systems at the properties, set up the electricity completely, fully built a bathroom in one, and bought all the necessary materials for roof repairs. There is still a lot of work to be done, and we will go back to see the houses in a month or two to see how they have been finished.
The visit to the cottages was bittersweet: on the one hand, it is always wonderful to see the real impact that our work has on people’s lives. On the other, where our work in Kharkiv Oblast has been about enabling people to stay in their homes, and is generally nmet with pure joy by recipients, it is clear that everyone we spoke to this week in Cherkasy Oblast would rather not be there. The process of having to start a new life, forced from your home which was first bombed, and then occupied, now living in far more cramped conditions in a totally new place, all whilst dealing with hugely intense trauma (one of the women told me about the death of the entire family living next door to her, whose home was directly hit), is hellishly difficult. All we can hope is that our contribution makes a small difference in allowing people a liveable space in which to begin this process.
The core tenet of KHARPP’s work has always been attempting to support both those who leave and those who stay behind. The increasingly intense Russian offensive on Donetsk Oblast has meant a new influx of refugees from the cities of Kurakhove, Myrnohrad, and Pokrovsk, and the surrounding villages, over the past months. Many of those refugees are in situations like Serhii’s, spending all their savings on cheap, small cottages in villages in safer areas of Ukraine, and then being left without means to make those properties liveable. Over the next few months, we hope to therefore be able to expand our work to support families like this. This week, we also met Lera, a woman from Myrnohrad, a city situated directly on the frontline, who has evacuated with her paralysed husband, two bedbound parents, and autistic son to central Ukraine, where they are living in a house with no functional heating system or bathroom. We are beginning these repairs over the coming days, and will update on their progress in our next bulletin.
This is a hugely ambitious new project, which will ultimately involve work across Ukraine, and the completion of far more comprehensive repairs than we have thus far been working with. We will only be able to do this with your help, so please keep donating.
We are also so excited to announce that our work in Kharkiv Oblast is going to be featured at the Ukrainian Pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale, opening in May. The Biennale lasts from May until November this year, and so if you are in Venice over the summer please do take some time to visit.
We also have a message from Andrew Adams, from the Oxford Kharkiv Association, who have consistently supported our work over the last two years:
Calling all KHARPP supporters in striking distance of Oxford. Oxford-Kharkiv would like to see if, by combining forces with everyone else we can achieve even greater things in support of Kharpp. We propose a meeting in Oxford to get to know each other and plan actions. if you're interested please email oxfordkharkiva@gmail.com. Thanks, looking forward to doing more for Ukraine.
Thank you all once again for continuing to support us.
Thanks for this update. It’s necessary that we all keep donating to support your work, which is clearly so important in practical terms and in conveying that there are so many of us who keep Ukraine in our hearts.