There is black roses everywhere in Irpin – the remains of fire damage on the facades of buildings. There are hastily filled shell craters and condemned buildings waiting to be demolished. The bridge over the Irpin River is still collapsing from its supports. But in the vehicle cemetery on the outskirts of the city, among the three piles of rusty and charred cars, there are bright yellow spots. Someone painted sunflowers.
In his café in Irpin’s shady central park, Borys Yefimenko points to the bullet holes shattering the polished wooden walls. Over coffee at an outdoor table, he has to pause, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose to hold back tears, as he remembers last spring, when this small town northeast of kyiv has become a battlefield.
The cafe, one of ten that Efimenko ran in Irpin, only opened on February 19, 2022. When the large-scale invasion began five days later, many people in the town did not believe , or could not understand, what was happening. event. They gathered in the park and drank coffee, watching the war unfold on their phones. After a night of bombing, Efimenko, his wife and their young child got into their car and left. “I only had enough fuel in my car to go 150 kilometers,” he says. “It was impossible to buy fuel, so we made a decision. We will cover 70 kilometers. If we don’t find fuel, we will come back. On the outskirts of town, they miraculously found diesel and headed southwest.
Many of his friends and employees remained, hiding in shelters. As they lacked basic necessities, Yefimenko told them to go get what they needed from his cafes. Three were killed: two shot down by a Russian column, the third by a sniper. At the end of March, Efimenko was informed that his apartment building had been bombed and his house destroyed.
Irpine was released on March 28, 2022. When Yefimenko returned on April 3, there was no running water or electricity. Parts of the city were still strewn with landmines. He shared a room with 25 other people. The streets were “apocalyptically empty,” he said. Only two of its ten stores could be recovered. “And for the first few days, we turned on the generator and we just made free coffee for people,” he says. Since then, he has opened three other stores, gradually rebuilding his business.
The damage caused by the Russian attack on Ukraine is incalculable. The UN says at least 7,000 civilians were killed (the real figure is likely higher), while estimates of Ukrainian soldier deaths run into the tens of thousands. Around 14 million people have been displaced; 150,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. Russia regularly attacks civilian infrastructure and healthcare facilities, destroying or damaging more than 200 hospitals and clinics. Twenty percent of the country’s famous agricultural land, known as “black soil,” has become unusable. An area the size of Florida – 174,000 square kilometers – must be cleared. The economy shrank by 30% in 2022. These are just things that can be counted or estimated. Added to this is ecological devastation, dramatically illustrated by the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in June, which flooded large areas of land and left others dry without irrigation.
