”As soon as we took the wards out of Pushcha-Vodytsya, a rocket landed there.” Deputy Head of the Kyiv City State Administration Maryna Honda on the life of Kyiv, migrants, and plans for the future — an interview

Since the beginning of April, when the Armed Forces of Ukraine drove the Russian occupiers out of Kyiv Oblast, there has been no fighting in the capital and around it. Now the local authorities are already thinking about rebuilding houses in damaged settlements, and Kyiv has become a refuge for internally displaced persons, especially from the east of the country, where fierce fighting is taking place. As of today, nearly 60 thousand IDPs have been registered in Kyiv. The city is now learning to live in a new reality and is preparing for any scenarios. This is especially important for vulnerable groups, such as retirees or people with disabilities — the first months of the war were the hardest for them. In an interview with Babel, Maryna Honda, deputy head of the Kyiv City State Administration, described how Kyiv survived the fighting, what problems remain and what to prepare for after the war.Babel tells the stories of women leaders during the war in "If not us, then who?" project together with the UN Women in Ukraine, as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Canada and the Government of Denmark.

About February and March

On February 24, at 5 in the morning, I was told that everyone was being called to work urgently — the war had begun. The first feeling was, of course, shock and misunderstanding. From the very morning people were leaving Kyiv, all shops, markets, and pharmacies are closed.

The first week we tried to adjust the system to work in new conditions. One of my areas of responsibility in the Kyiv City State Administration is social sphere. 99% of the people who work there are women, and many of them left the city in the early days. Some of them ended up in the occupied territories because they lived in Bucha, Irpin, and Brovary district.

There was a huge burden on the social sphere then. The number of people who needed help increased exponentially every day. For example, young people left their parents because they didnʼt want to leave. And this is usually the elderly or bedridden patients. They were not registered with us because they were cared for by their children. We started getting a barrage of calls for help.

For the first two weeks, my page [on Facebook] was flooded with messages: we need food, medicine for cancer patients, for children. We tried to help everyone as much as possible. I think we have managed to provide help for vulnerable people. Now our tercentres are working as usual, but remain ready for emergencies.

About the work of institutions for people with special needs

In Pushcha-Vodytsya we have several psychoneurological boarding schools, in the city there are several more psychoneurological childrenʼs boarding schools, boarding houses for elderly people. We had to decide on their evacuation. As soon as we took our wards out of Pushcha-Vodytsya, the next day a rocket arrived there. The geriatric boarding house was right in the middle between our troops and the Russians, there was a constant artillery duel over it.

In January, the mayor [Vitaliy Klitschko] set a task — to prepare food for all centers, to provide opportunities to switch to additional power supply. We have 26 subordinate institutions — psychoneurological boarding schools, childrenʼs, geriatric, psychological and social rehabilitation centers for orphans deprived of care. They were all loaded with the maximum amount of food needed to function safely. But with Yasnogorodka it was difficult. There is a center for people without permanent residence who have disabilities. They were occupied in two days [after the invasion started]. Then people from the surrounding occupied villages began to come to this center, because it was relatively safe [to hide from shelling inside]. I will not tell how they communicated with those Russians, how the Russians took away food. But we tried — and we succeeded — to deliver food to them by boat.

About evacuation

We started a large-scale evacuation in the first days of March. According to the agreement with Ukrzaliznytsia, we were allocated 10 train cars in an evacuation train. We started transporting people with disabilities from Kyiv, large families, and other people in need of protection to Poland and further to other European countries. Now evacuees are scattered across Europe, but some are returning, such as those with children. There are children who want to go home. The first evacuations were very difficult. But we managed to evacuate our boarding schools — a total of more than 7,000 people.

Now people from other Ukrainian regions have started coming to us — there are almost 140 of them in boarding schools, whether they are migrants with disabilities or the elderly. For the first month, Kyiv itself was in a war zone. Then people didnʼt even stay with us. Those who left the regions via Kyiv received food, maybe spent a few hours in the city, at the train station, and then drove further west.

About internally displaced persons

As of June 1, more than 60 thousand IDPs were registered in the city in just one and a half months. In 2014-2015, we registered a total of about 200 thousand. People register and receive funds from the state. If necessary, our social services provide a "starter pack": food, if necessary — clothes. But the biggest issue is, of course, housing.

Before the war, 32 thousand people were queuing for flats housing in Kyiv. These are liquidators, large families, people with disabilities, participants of war, participants of anti-terrorist operation. This problem is now so large that no city can solve it without the help of the state.

Previously, the law provided for the allocation of square meters [on such needs] during construction. The developer must have given a percentage of the square meters it is building to the community. Somewhere in 2010, this rule was abolished. We have repeatedly said: please return at least half of this amount. We thought that then the queue in Kyiv would go at an incredible pace.

The city simply does not have the technical capacity to accommodate migrants. People are usually registered with their acquaintances or relatives. Very often they go to the west of Ukraine or to Europe. But this problem [with housing for migrants] is national. It will apply not only to Kyiv, but to all the cities where people came. And, unfortunately, until the war is over, we will not solve this issue comprehensively. Although it will be very, very painful.

On the level of domestic violence during the war

Our Center for Gender Equality, Prevention and Combating Violence continued to operate. The main problem was that the police did not come to the calls. It was busy with other things. Our hotline worked constantly, even during air raid sirens. We redirected the calls to personal numbers, and our specialists worked from bomb shelters. There were a lot of calls to psychologists. That is, the hotline was not used to talk about domestic violence, but to ask what to do. Men, women [called] because they had psychological stress.

About the work now

Now we have just begun to "gather together" in terms of building systematic work. What worries me the most is raising funds for our infrastructure, because all the specialized programs are now irrelevant. And now, for example, we have rehabilitation centers for children, and they are without proper equipment. Now we need to find an investor who can buy it. Itʼs necessary to provide elderly people with, say, diapers. The amount per adult is actually huge. We also provide diapers for some categories of children with disabilities.

Since the beginning of the invasion, 50 children have been left without parents for various reasons. We have evacuated our center for social and psychological rehabilitation, where children were left without guardianship and care, but it was already full of new kids. When all goes well, we will begin to gradually return those children who were evacuated. Now we are discussing that during the summer they should be where they are now.

On psychological rehabilitation after the war

Many will need psychological rehabilitation. Our defenders will begin to return [from the war zone], so we need to build a new rehabilitation system, similar to the one in Israel. We had talks with the Israeli embassy to build the same system here. It is very effective. Their centers can provide psychological and physical relief — itʼs like hobby clubs.

There will be a huge number of people who will return from the war and will need basic rehabilitation. Before the invasion, we had a problem — some of the guys who were on the line of contact came back and faced problems with drug and alcohol addiction. They did not want to make contact on their own, they only went to a certain specialist who was also at the frontline. Now the psychological burden on them is even greater. I communicate, in particular, with those who were in Bucha. They personally told me: "We saw everything [before], but we didnʼt even expect things like that."

The sooner we start thinking about what it will be like after the war, the better we will understand what needs to be done. We donʼt know the number of families who have lost loved ones. These are mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, and children. And this is an additional social history, first of all — socio-psychological. Therefore, we need to think about rehabilitation centers.

About readiness for different scenarios

Of course itʼs scary — what if they [Russians] come back again? We are preparing for this, we have a military-civilian administration that deals with military support. Our humanitarian headquarters has worked everything out — created stocks of food for long-term storage, which will be needed by the city. The issue of food supply has been resolved, as well as with sanitary and hygienic items. Of course, we cannot predict everything. And how to guarantee that the rocket will not hit somewhere now? Therefore, we are ready to get used to living in the current state. But we believe in our Armed Forces and hope for a quick victory over the Russian invaders.

Translated from Ukrainian by Anton Semyzhenko.

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