Alexander Senkevich, Mayor of Mykolaiv, spoke to UN News about reconstruction efforts and the role of the United Nations amid the ongoing shelling threat.
“We bombed for 230 days, 159 people died, and 750 were injured. Many cities have been destroyed because there are guns everywhere.
Mykolaiv City Council / Valery Fedchenko
Alexander Senkevich, Mayor of Mykolaiv.
Despite the war, the city lived, and everything worked. Even the journalists who came to talk to us about the results of the massacre said that we were cleaning everything up in a hurry, that they didn’t have time to take pictures.
Some residents have forgotten about what happened. For some, the war is over. But, this is not so easy. For example, in the public car, people forget that half of our cars were taken to the front, and of the remaining ones, a quarter of them were stopped when they hit him.
Drinking water
Since April last year, we have started using water from the South Buh River, but it cannot be purified to drinkable level due to salt content. The consequences of the explosion of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station have exacerbated this problem.
Our water is located in the area of the Dnipro River, 73 kilometers from the city. The port has been damaged and is currently under seven meters of water. We cannot restore water supply to the city from there. This is a big problem for us now.
UN support
We always feel the support of the UN, even in the most difficult times. We met with representatives of the UN. They are constantly collecting data on the needs of the population, and try to help us. Through UN agencies, the needs of a city are met. We have received water, food, and other forms of support for the residents.
Risk of shelling
Before the war, almost half a million people lived in Mykolaiv. Today, we have registered 350,000 people in the city, which includes about 50,000 who fled here from other regions of Ukraine.
Life is slowly getting better. Small businesses have started to work again, but large businesses have not returned due to problems with water and electricity. The main concern, however, continues to be the danger of shelling.
Reconstruction of the city
Residential and office buildings were damaged across Mykolaiv.
Damage to the city is $860 million, according to the Kyiv School of Economics, and that’s without taking the cost of new construction into account.
The restoration of the city is a long-term process. When the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe asked us to participate in the UN4Mykolaiv project, we were happy, we jumped up and voted for it with all our hands.
Our task is not only to repair what was damaged, but to rethink everything, to find a new meaning for life in Mykolaiv, its economic power, and the role of the city in the new Ukraine.
Mykolaiv as the gateway to Ukraine
Local workers took the survivors to the city of Mykolaiv.
Together with the UN, we work on all the details planning the future of the city. This is not as a project for Mykolaiv, but as a global program – a model that can be applied to other destroyed cities of Ukraine.
We want to see a clean, beautiful Mykolaiv with comfortable opportunities for recreation, convenient urban infrastructure, and modern schools. Mykolaiv people also see their city as an industrial and commercial center. In order for everything to be beautiful and well maintained, the city needs to create businesses and jobs.
We do not want to live only on the money of tourists, although we would like to create a kind of amusement park in our south, like Legoland or Disneyland, where not only Ukrainians but also foreigners can come.
Ports were our first investment opportunity after the war. Before the war, we handled about 40 percent of the goods imported into and from Ukraine. Mykolaiv is seen as the gateway to Ukraine. I said in negotiations with investors that Mykolaiv should not be considered as a market for products or services only, but as a gateway to the market of the whole country.
‘City of heroes’
I would really like that our city is not forgotten after the end of the war. Locals have described it as the last southern tip of free Europe; we protect you well. I am very grateful for the interest of the UN in Mykolaiv. Mykolaiv takes the title of ‘hero city’, but we call it ‘hero city’ because this applies to all its inhabitants.
