Source: European Investment Bank
Vadym Chursin’s mother died long before the war. His father, Dmytro, has been his parent and best friend since he was very young. The two have grown even closer since their town near Ukraine’s southern border was occupied by Russian soldiers.
“There is barely anything left of our house today and not a single building still standing in our old town,” says Vadym, who is 16 years old and had lived in Oleshky, a city near Kherson, where his father ran a business building trendy tiny homes on wheels. For the past two years, father and son have been renting half a house about 220 kilometres to the west in Odesa, near Vadym’s new school. “We’re what people call displaced persons. There are many of us here and all of us are helping each other.”
Vadym attends Odesa School No. 41, one of the first schools repaired in 2021 under the European Investment Bank’s first Ukraine recovery programme. The Bank has helped modernise a group of Odesa schools since then and a city hospital.
Schools are a focus for the dozens of engineers, economists, loan officers and advisory specialists at the European Investment Bank who are trying to meet the urgent needs of Ukraine. Other critical work involves electricity lines, heating, water, roads, hospitals, community centres and bomb shelters. These types of projects allow people to go to work, drive to the doctor, buy groceries, get an education and stay safe during bomb attacks.
The Russian invasion has caused widespread devastation and created a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and surrounding countries. Roads, bridges, hospitals, schools and residential buildings need repair in Ukraine, particularly in areas of intense fighting such as Kharkiv and the Donbas region. One study estimates economic damage in Ukraine at more than $150 billion since Russia invaded in February 2022. The cost of recovery over the next decade is estimated at about $500 billion.
The European Investment Bank is helping to renovate more than 300 schools, kindergartens, hospitals and social housing facilities in about 150 Ukrainian cities. It has improved electricity, gas, water, sanitation and solid waste management in more than a dozen regions, and has finished more than 100 projects. It receives new requests for help every week.
Pavel Novak, a public sector engineer at the European Investment Bank who is from Kyiv, where his parents still live, says a friend who was disabled in the war reminded him that soldiers are fighting to beat Russia, but also to see that other Ukrainians can continue to live normal lives in their home cities and communities today.
“My friend said to me, ‘Look, Pavel, we are doing this to keep life going on, bakeries and restaurants open, keep kids going to school and ensure that something beyond war still exists in this country.’”
In September 2024, the European Union’s financing arm proposed a €600 million energy rescue plan to help Ukraine as winter approaches, ensuring that businesses and homes have electricity and heat. Shelters will be built to protect electricity substations from bombings. The European Investment Bank is in regular discussions with Ukrhydroenergo, Ukraine’s largest hydropower company, and Ukrenergo, the national electricity transmission operator, to repair damaged power networks. It’s common for some parts of Ukraine to lose electricity for half of every day.