Approximately 700 people still live in the village of Bila Krynytsia of the Veliko Oleksandrivska community
This is one of the settlements that the Lviv region takes under its patronage within the framework of the “Side by Side” project. In addition to private houses, as a result of Russian aggression in the village of Bila Krynytsia, a school and a kindergarten were damaged. In total, 104 objects need to be repaired.
On the territory of the settlement there is a bakery plant with an elevator, where rockets landed, a railway station, and a post office were damaged.
“Our village was a transit village, through it the Russian occupiers traveled with military equipment to the neighboring village, where the front line was. When our military drove the enemies across the river, then they began shelling our settlements. At the time of the most active shelling, almost everyone left the village, only 35 people remained. And already in the fall of 2022, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces de-occupied part of the Kherson region, the locals began to return to their homes. Of course, these were already damaged dwellings,” said Anastasiya Kovana, head of the Bila Krynytsia settlement.
The first team of construction workers from Lviv arrived in the village at the beginning of this week, they are collecting measurements of windows and doors that are to be made for replacement in dwellings. They plan to complete the work within a month. And soon, a second team will go to Bila Krynytsia to repair roofs.
36-year-old Valentina, a resident of Bila Krynytsia, left her native village on March 21, 2022. Together with her husband, they lived in Kryvyi Rih in the status of IDPs. They returned home a year after the deoccupation of the village of Oleksandrivka by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“Earlier, we did not want to return, because there were shellings from the Russian side. They also did not want to spend the winter in such a period in a damaged house without electricity. During the year that we were gone, a rocket flew into the neighboring house, shrapnel damaged the roof of our house, and the blast wave knocked out the doors and windows. Due to the leakage of the roof, the inside of the house also became unfit for comfortable living. My husband and I lost our jobs, lived only on paychecks, as internally displaced people, so we did not have enough funds for independent repairs. Only recently was it possible to buy slate to somehow cover the roof. I know that construction workers from the Lviv region are already working on the neighboring streets, I expect them too,” said Ms. Valentina.
In total, within the framework of the “Side by Side” project, Lviv Oblast plans to restore 300 objects. Our region takes under its patronage the restoration of private homes and social infrastructure facilities in the village of Bila Krynytsia, the villages of Nova Zorya and Tavriyske.