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Resilience
The Monitor's View

Ukraine’s rise-from-the-ashes resilience

Rebuilding the country in the midst of war was thought crazy. Yet look at how one city devastated by Russian atrocities is rebuilding.

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REUTERS
People sweep a street in Bucha, outside Kyiv, March 30, the first anniversary of its liberation from Russian occupation.
  • By the Monitor's Editorial Board

The wonders of Ukraine’s resilience never cease to amaze. The latest example is the flotilla of boats rescuing some 16,000 people stranded in floodwaters after the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River. “We are strong, we are resistant,” one rescuer, Svitlana Plokha, told The Guardian, explaining that “everyone got together when the invasion started.”

The massive response has inspired the humanitarian work of Martin Griffiths, the United Nations emergency relief coordinator. “The people of Ukraine have shown extraordinary resilience – our urgent humanitarian task is to continue to help them,” he said.

Ukraine’s economy shows “remarkable resilience,” states the International Monetary Fund. The Ukrainian military keeps bouncing back on the battlefield. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s highly visible leadership almost defines the spirit of recovery.

“He proved to the whole world that we stand up for our values,” Andriy Shaikan, a university rector in the president’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, told Agence France-Presse.

The country’s ability to spring back helps explain why world leaders will soon gather in London for the second Ukraine Recovery Conference. Even as the war with Russia rages, President Zelenskyy insists the country begin to rebuild. Donors and investors are eager to listen to the government’s plans. “The Ukrainian people are not going to allow themselves to be broken,” said the United Kingdom’s foreign secretary, James Cleverly, host of the June 21-22 event.

The best example of an unbowed nation is the phoenixlike rebuilding of Bucha, a suburb of the capital, Kyiv. In the early days of the invasion, Russian forces killed hundreds of civilians and left much of the city in ruins. Bucha became a symbol of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Now Bucha is a reconstruction site, with a new hardware store to help residents rebuild. Malls have reopened. Famed philanthropist Howard Buffett is building Ukraine’s first kitchen factory. Some Israeli investors, after discovering a high demand for gyms in Ukraine, are investing in a sports complex for Bucha. “Ukrainians are trying to get back to normal and rebuild their lives, partly through sports,” one investor told The Jerusalem Post.

Bucha’s rise from the ashes helps show Ukraine can win the war. It has turned out that the country’s most valuable resource is the bonds of affection among the Ukrainian people. As Oleksandra Azarkhina, deputy minister of infrastructure, told The Guardian, “rebuilding is also part of our resistance.”

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