Life has stopped in Sievierodonetsk, Luhansk oblast after its occupation, people have been left alone with their problems. The occupation authorities pretend to be intensively rebuilding the city, but local residents tell a completely different story.
1. Restoring public utilities
The Russian occupiers say that the "communal services" are actively working on restoring gas and water supply in Sievierodonetsk. However, the locals complain that, on the contrary, no one wants to help them, and they fix the pipes on their own.
″People try to weld gas and water pipes on their own in Sievierodonetsk. After they are waiting for the services to at least connect all these pipes. Most of the workers of communal services left, they even took equipment with them in some places. At the beginning, many workers came, they inserted windows and repaired pipes. Now everyone has fled," local residents said.
According to the so-called deputy of the People's Council of the LPR Vitalii Kishkinov, there are 802 residential buildings in Sievierodonetsk, of which 764 are damaged.
The occupation authorities claim that 285 houses are connected to electricity, that's only 36%.
According to Oleksandr Striuk, the head of the Sievierodonetsk military administration, it will be impossible to stay in the city in winter due to the lack of heat.
The occupiers say that oppression is allegedly being carried out, and that there will be heat supply. In reality they pretend to start the heating season for the picture. There were system breaks and this requires replacement and revision of the internal state. After the bombing, the collectors were damaged.
"It is impossible to talk about centralized heat supply, because it is not realistic to repair the damaged communal boiler house in Sievierodonetsk," Striuk said.
At the same time, the so-called "Forestry and hunting economy enterprise of Sievierodonetsk" allocated to residents of three settlements of Sievierodonetsk raion plots in the forest from which they can collect firewood on their own. The occupiers made it clear to people: there will be efforts to provide heat supply in the cities, but we will not even try to do it in these settlements.
Head of Luhansk regional military administration Serhiy Hayday says that people are leaving the occupied cities for the countryside, where they are going to live in empty houses in order to spend the winter in warmth.
"The occupation authorities did not take into account the cities captured in 2022 in spring, and they still do not consider it necessary to do anything there. There will be no centralized heating this year. And we are talking about more than one thousand multi-storey buildings," Luhansk regional military administration writes.
Anton Kovalevskyi, the director of the housing and communal services department of Sievierodonetsk city military ciliv administration, does not believe in the occupiers′ promises to restore heat supply in the near future.
"It is unlikely that they will restore centralized heat supply, because it is not only the restoration of boiler houses or communications that are around the city. It is communications that go through houses, these are windows that are broken. It takes a lot of time to restore heat supply." , - Kovalevskyi said.
The situation is also difficult with the restoration of electricity and water supply.
"There will be no water without light. It is also very difficult to restore light because power lines and poles have been destroyed. In the houses, all communications have been disrupted. There are, perhaps, surviving sections that were underground, but there are direct hits in the well and on the water supply system, and the sewage system. That's why all their plans - I heard that they said they would restore everything in a month or two - I think it's impossible," the head of the Housing and Communal Services Department said.
2. Improvement of Sievierodonetsk
The occupation authorities of Sievierodonetsk actively talk about the fact that they are improving the life of the city, but in fact they are doing it at the expense of "living labor." Thus, "clean Fridays" were introduced in Sievierodonetsk. The residents of the city gather together and clean up garbage, in short - perform the work of communal services. As of October 14, the occupiers publish a photo in which a pile of garbage has been removed, and the city has been under occupation for about 4 months.
As of today, there are still piles of garbage in the city, there is no electricity, water, or gas in most of residential buildings. No one picks up the debris, people clean up by themselves near houses. There are pots and other utensils on the streets near residential buildings, people are cooking on the fires. Sievierodonetsk looks like this today:
According to preliminary data, at least 167 educational institutions, 18 sports facilities, 6 social welfare institutions, 64 health care institutions, 115 cultural institutions, 37 administrative buildings, 7 centers for the provision of administrative services, 7 railway stations, 48 objects of life support. were damaged in Luhansk oblast as a result constant shelling and bombing.
3. Jobs in Sievierodonetsk
The occupation authorities in Sievierodonetsk state that the city has already returned to normal life, but people work at enterprises for free or for food.
In one of the local chats, a woman complains that her mother has been working for free at "Vodokanal" for 3.5 months.
"After the first month of work, they were promised to issue the documents, the director was changed. It seems that the staff list was already approved in Luhansk, and they were supposed to receive the first salary at the end of September, but... now it is the third director. It turned out that they have not been issued so far. The director and the accountant have disappeared. Now the documents have been taken all the way to Moscow. This is the kind of work (slavery) in the People's Republic of China," the woman writes.
Another person writes that they work in the city for food:
"Yes, there is a lot of job positions in Sievierodonetsk, but so far for food."
4. Education
According to the statements of the occupation authorities, on September 1 academic year in Sievierodonetsk started in the ″part-time″ way. It will last until the schools are restored. The occupiers said that 5 educational institutions have started work. However, the residents of Sievierodonetsk told us that teachers do not teach children at all.
"It is safe to say that the promised learning process is not available in schools. Children do not go to school, online training is impossible, because there is no Internet connection in the city. Teachers give homework - that's all learning process. They might behave this way because they do not receive salaries," a local resident said.
The Russians are not in a hurry to restore schools in the destroyed Sievierodonetsk, because at that time they are restoring what was not damaged in Luhansk oblast.
It is currently impossible to fully calculate the scale of the destruction and the amount of damage caused by the Russian aggression in the city.
According to the head of the city, Oleksandr Striuk, after the de-occupation of Sievierodonetsk, 60% of the houses will have to be rebuilt. Therefore, now the city without the benefits of civilization is on the verge of a humanitarian disaster.
Author: Valeriia Melnyk
