Latest news with #Vasylenko
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Albuquerque to Kharkiv, Part 1: The Ambulance
The ambulance that Albuquerque Fire Rescue donated to the city of Kharkiv, which is currently undergoing repairs in the Ukrainian city. (Courtesy of Oleksandra Kirian, Kharkiv City Council) KHARKIV, Ukraine— It's been three days since Yevhen Vasylenko has slept through the night, and a deep worry line has worn its way across his forehead. A spokesperson for the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv's Emergency Situations Department, Vasylenko says missile and drone attacks have awakened him each night. Two nights earlier, Russia's biggest attack on the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv to date had left at least 12 dead and 90 injured. Here, just 23 miles from the Russian border, the attacks are more intense and frequent. More than 12,000 of the city's buildings, 70% residential, have been destroyed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 'The attacks right now are almost every night,' Vasylenko says through a translator, describing combined attacks of both drones and rockets. 'We are near the front line, so during all the years of the full-scale invasion we have had constant attacks.' Standing outside one of the city's fire stations, Vasylenko takes a final drag on his cigarette before gesturing for us to step inside as an air raid siren whistles through the mid-afternoon air, indicating an incoming ballistic missile. When those strikes come, Ukrainian first responders pull on their flak jackets and kevlar helmets, and head out to pull civilians from the rubble of buildings, extinguish fires and disarm mines. They do so aboard a fleet of emergency vehicles — including fire trucks donated from Germany; a specialized tow truck gifted by an American entrepreneur; and an ambulance sent from the City of Albuquerque. In July 2023, Albuquerque formed a sister city relationship with the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, and soon began sending aid, including a decommissioned ambulance formerly used by Albuquerque's Station 8, located in the foothills near the intersection of Indian School and Tramway. 'From the beginning, we've been dedicated partners with Kharkiv — including the donation of an ambulance to support their emergency services — and we will continue doing everything we can to lend a hand to our friends overseas who need our help now more than ever,' Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said in a statement. The ambulance is a 2011 Ford F6G, a behemoth of a rescue vehicle. Albuquerque Fire Rescue Lt. Paramedic Brent Rohrig, of Station 8, recalls that the department purchased two such vehicles, which were specced out to be large enough for the tallest firefighter in the department, who stood over 7 feet tall. The department used the vehicles for a few years, but with only two in the fleet, many EMTs and paramedics didn't have an opportunity to learn on them. When the city purchased new ambulances in 2015, it moved the 2011 models to reserves. 'This ambulance has already been in active service with the Emergency Situations Department's Situation Center in Kharkiv City Council,' Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terehov said through a translator. 'It was used to respond to emergency calls, to reach sites of explosions and to provide help in the most difficult conditions. It's multifunctional, well-equipped and it truly saves lives.' Albuquerque Fire Rescue has a legacy of donating emergency vehicles that are obsolete for the city's needs, but still in good enough shape to be useful elsewhere, says Public Information Officer Lt. Jason Fejer. 'We did nothing more than give it away,' he said of the ambulance donated to Kharkiv. In the past, Albuquerque has donated retired fire engines to Isleta Pueblo and the towns of Mesilla and Eagle's Nest. Albuquerque first began its sister city relationship with the city of Kharkiv at the urging of Northern New Mexico's Sikh community. The religious community, which has roots in India but a large presence at the Hacienda de Guru Ram Das in Española, counted among the first to offer aid to Ukrainian cities impacted by the war. When Simran Singh, a member of Española's Sikh community and a kundalini yoga teacher, approached the Albuquerque City Council about forming a sister city partnership with Kharkiv, he said the answer was an immediate yes. 'It's such a beautiful testament to what this state stands for,' he said. 'The ambulance is one outcome of a total community-to-community aid initiative.' Although he's grateful for all the support the United States has offered Ukraine, Kharkiv Mayor Terekhov says, 'direct city-to-city contacts are among the fastest and most effective forms of support today — especially during wartime, when action needs to be taken not in theory, but immediately.' He added that the relationship 'provides not only vital resources but also a sense of solidarity — the knowledge that we are not alone,' noting that representatives from Albuquerque have visited 'Kharkiv despite the ongoing shelling — a truly courageous gesture.' At the moment, the Albuquerque ambulance is undergoing repairs to replace a few worn out parts. 'A number of those parts are manufactured only in the United States, so we are waiting for them to arrive,' said Terekhov. That's not unusual for donated emergency vehicles, says spokesman Vasylenko, who notes that fire engines from the US and Europe are generally designed to attach to fire hydrants, which Ukraine does not use. The style of ambulances used in the United States were not common in Ukraine either before donated vehicles began arriving. As tensions continue to escalate in Ukraine — with Russia launching some of its most intense strikes on Ukrainian cities amid ongoing peace talks — the ambulance may be more needed than ever. 'Once repairs are complete, the ambulance will return to duty — helping people in need,' said Terekhov. Liubov Sholudko and Tetiana Burianova contributed reporting and translation support. This reporting was supported by the International Women's Media Foundation's Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine's Unseen Frontlines Initiative in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.
Al Jazeera
13-03-2025
- Al Jazeera
Sporadic, slow rebuilding deepens wounds of Ukrainian town bombed by Russia
Borodyanka, Ukraine – Days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a 500-kilogramme high-explosive bomb dropped from a fighter jet collapsed a section of Mariya Vasylenko's apartment building. During the March 1, 2022, attack that levelled or damaged dozens more houses in this once-tranquil town, 40 kilometres (25 miles) northwest of Kyiv, Vasylenko and her neighbours were hiding in an ice-cold basement. They rushed outside to see how the heatwave turned the air blue, melted snow and ignited cars, leafless trees and frozen blades of grass around the building. 'Have you ever seen hell? That's what it was,' Vasylenko, 80, told Al Jazeera. Disoriented and deafened, she could not find her daughter Olena, a 41-year-old nurse, and her son-in-law Serhiy Khukhro, a 37-year-old construction worker, who were hiding in the basement under the collapsed section. Their crushed bodies remained in the flooded basement while Vasylenko was evacuated to central Ukraine with their young children, Milena and Bohdan. Meanwhile, Russian soldiers moved into Vasylenko's apartment for a month, leaving rubbish, excrement and graffiti with Soviet symbols, and plundering all valuables when Moscow ordered a retreat from around Kyiv and northern Ukraine. 'She doesn't smile any more' Weeks later, Vasylenko returned to Borodyanka to bury what was left of Olena and Serhiy. Her grandchildren were sent to safety in Poland. She could not bear to tell Milena about her parents' deaths for more than a year until they returned to Ukraine. Milena is 12 now. She returned to Borodyanka with Vasylenko – and is deeply traumatised. 'She doesn't smile any more,' Vasylenko said, sitting on a bench next to a community centre where she and her neighbour sing in an amateur choir. 'She can't bear to see parents hugging and kissing her classmates after school because her mum and dad never will,' the 79-year-old neighbour, Hanna Ryashchenko, told Al Jazeera. Both women and their relatives live in tiny rooms in a dormitory donated by Poland with communal bathrooms and kitchens. Excavators started removing the debris from around Vasylenko's building only two weeks ago. From hell to limbo At least 300 civilians were killed in Borodyanka, according to survivors, Ukrainian officials and human rights groups. Russian forces bombed Borodyanka even though it never hosted a military base or plants producing weaponry. Amnesty International, a rights monitor, concluded that the bombings 'were both disproportionate and indiscriminate under international humanitarian law, and as such constitute war crimes'. Russian soldiers operating tanks and artillery shelled apartment buildings point blank. They also shelled shops and malls just to crack their doors or walls open and loot what was inside. The soldiers shot at anyone they saw without warning – and threatened to gun down those who tried to retrieve bodies from the streets or rescue survivors from under collapsed buildings, residents said. For its part, Moscow has continually denied targeting civilians. 'I preferred to remain at home and starve,' Volodymyr Robovyk, a 69-year-old retired factory worker, told Al Jazeera. Most of the trapped civilians, including children, were buried alive as they froze to death or starved. Only one woman managed to save a family of eight by sneaking food and water into a tiny crevice at night. Fifty-five apartment buildings, hundreds of houses, shops and offices have been destroyed or damaged, rendering thousands homeless and jobless, officials said. A slow restoration A dozen apartment buildings have been fully restored or retrofitted with heat-saving padding, plastic doors and windows, residents say. But many more remain untouched. 'They dug this hole and are doing nothing,' Robovyk said, pointing at a construction pit on the Tsentralnaya (Central) street once named after Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin. Behind the fence was a brand new excavator that tumbled into the pit and lay upside down. Robovyk's tiny, shell-damaged house was patched up by volunteers in the autumn of 2022, but the renovation of larger buildings is far from over. 'The end of reconstruction is December 2024,' a plastic sign on the side of Valentyna Illyshenko's five-storey apartment building reads. But the house is still encapsulated in scaffolding as workers finish covering it with heat-saving plastic that also hides bullet and shrapnel holes. Illyshenko fled her apartment with her husband and their six-year-old son on February 28, 2022, when Russian tanks and armoured vehicles entered Borodyanka or roared by on their way to Kyiv. She said Russian soldiers occupied their apartment – and drank all the alcohol, destroyed every family photo and stole each electronic device. At least one of the unwanted guests was a sniper who nestled in the kitchen and cut a hole in the drapes, she said. The soldiers left the refrigerator and the washing machine only because they were too heavy to be carried down from the fourth floor, she said. All heavy household appliances have been taken out of apartments on lower floors, and the Russians left Borodyanka with trucks loaded with stolen goods, Illyshenko and other locals said. 'Hatred is what I still feel,' she told Al Jazeera. 'I could choke them with my own hands.' Having escaped the occupation's hell, she lives in a reconstruction limbo with the noise, the dust and the dirt. Turf wars Her explanation as to why the renovation progresses so slowly is simple – she blames Ukraine's endemic corruption and the dismissal of Oleksander Sakharuk, a community head elected in 2020. 'They don't let him work,' Illyshenko said. Sakharuk was a member of the Platform for Life, a pro-Moscow party that was banned in 2022 and whose members were barred from holding elected jobs. Even though many Platform for Life members in Russia-occupied areas began collaborating with Moscow, some remained staunchly pro-Ukrainian – including Sakharuk, several Borodyanka residents told Al Jazeera. He got his job back in June 2023 and last October after court rulings, but both times the justice ministry overturned the decisions. 'When he's back to work, things are moving. When they fire him again, things stop,' Vitalii Sydorenko, a 47-year-old war veteran, told Al Jazeera. Sakharuk did not respond to requests for comment. Ukraine's ubiquitous corruption scandals have also delayed Borodyanka's renovation. Last December, anti-monopoly officials cancelled a contract to restore the apartment building where Vasylenko's daughter and son-in-law died because of the construction company's alleged corruption ties. Vasylenko also spent several months and hundreds of dollars to restore the deed on her apartment and other documents destroyed by the bombing. 'I'm hoping to move back, but I'm too old to wait for years,' she said.
