report
Status: 05.01.2023 1:14 p.m
Fear accompanies the Ukrainians every day – because a rocket can hit anywhere at any time. Many people are faced with the ruins of their lives.
“Everything is full of broken glass,” Galina Dmitryevna sighs, collecting the remains of her jars in a bucket in front of her house in Kyiv. “It’s a New Year’s greeting from Russia,” she says ironically and bends down again. She wears heavy gloves to avoid cutting herself. She wipes the sweat from her forehead with the sleeve of her gray wool sweater.
On New Year’s Eve, the Russian rocket landed only about 20 meters away.
“When will it finally be over”
“The air raid alarm started around one o’clock, and at two o’clock everything collapsed, the clock stopped at two o’clock,” says Dmitryevna. She was sitting in the kitchen with her husband:
When it all started it was very scary because it was so noisy and it’s a good thing we didn’t move to another room because otherwise we wouldn’t be able to live anymore. We sat there and it banged so loud, and you think when will this finally be over.
Galina Dmitryevna survived – a Russian missile landed about 20 meters from her house.
Image: Andrea Beer
His wife was cooking the meal
A few meters further up the street, Serhii Karagizkyj stands in the ruins of his life. When the rocket hits right in front of the house, his wife is cooking New Year’s Eve dinner for him and their ten-year-old son. The tall man in his thirties balances over the rubble in the ruins of his house.
Here was the kitchen, he reports: “When I found my wife, she was lying right there. There’s the stove, and there was a dishwasher. Look, there it is, with her front crushed. My wife was under the dishwasher. I pulled her out, but she stopped breathing.”
The surrounding houses are also destroyed or damaged. Perplexed, he picks up a pan and a jar of golden honey that has remained intact amidst the rubble: “Within a second I had nothing left. That’s how it was. Within a second there was nothing left.”
There is hardly anything left of Serhii Karagizkyj’s house. His wife was cooking New Year’s Eve dinner when the rocket hit.
Image: Andrea Beer
In 2023, too, war will remain the topic
“The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine will remain the dominant issue in 2023,” says Ihor Popov from the Institute for the Future in Kyiv. This is related, among other things, to food and nuclear safety, as well as the supply of energy. Territorial integrity is the most important thing, but recapturing the occupied territories is very difficult. To achieve this, Ukraine needs reliable arms support from its partners, which could be enshrined in an agreement.
The results on the battlefield are the basis for diplomacy, says the political expert. He thinks a gradual push back of the Russian army from the occupied Ukrainian areas is conceivable. But both sides could run out of ammunition in a few months. The developments are difficult to predict, says Popov. Even months before the liberation of the southern city of Cherson, nobody really predicted this.
A lot of money needed for reconstruction
In Russia’s war against Ukraine, supplies, exhaustion and the economy also play a major role. Prime Minister Denys Schmyhal estimates that the country now needs more than 700 billion US dollars for reconstruction alone.
Political analyst Popov also considers the following important: There is also a political challenge. Civil liberties have been restricted by martial law for almost a year and there is a lack of political pluralism: “For Ukrainians, this is one of the most important things they have fought for in the last 30 years of independence. And it is important to maintain democratic pluralism for the time being to keep after the win.”
Popov does not want to ignore unpleasant scenarios either. For example, other wars in the world could distract the allies from Ukraine, economic influences had to be considered, or the war could freeze due to lack of ammunition on both sides. So there are a lot of possibilities how it could go on.
Dream for every Ukrainian: the end of the war
President Volodymyr Zelenskyj wished the people a year of victory and not only spoke from the soul of Aleksandr from Kyiv: “We are all waiting so much for victory. That is the only dream, I think for everyone in Ukraine. That the war is over is over and we can live peacefully and normally.”
Serhii Kargizkyj is trying to somehow live on after the death of his wife, together with his young son. He is still standing in the rubble that was his home a moment ago.
I take pills to calm down. I can’t cry anymore and I take the pills because there’s no other way. I grew up here, I lived here, my wife died here. Everything I had was here. Now I have this pan and an iron.