A part of a residential building on 82 Natalia Uzhviy St in Kharkiv is being prepared for demolition. In March 2022, Russians hit this 16-story tower apartment in North Saltivka [a neighborhood in Kharkiv — ed.] with an aerial bomb.
Gwara Media reporters showed how this process is unfolding and asked the locals how they feel about it.
“There might be bodies under the rubble of this building; I talked to the relatives of a missing person [who used to live there — ed.]. I think the building needs to be demolished because a part of it is already hanging by a thread. I believe it needed to be demolished a long time ago,” an activist, Serhii, says.
Nadiia, a local to this neighborhood, says that the bodies of two people — a woman and a man — might be under the rubble. The woman also agrees that the apartment tower needs to be demolished.
“It unnerves everyone. [It] crackles so much when it’s windy,” Nadiia adds.
Foreign media published a lot of photos of this building.
“This building is known to the entire world already, and it became the face of “ruskii mir” [the Russian word “мир” is pronounced in Ukrainian here. It can mean both “world” and “peace,” so the phrase can be translated as “Russian world” or/and “Russian peace,” — ed.] First, we thought of turning it into a museum, but the residents were against it: it hurts too much, they said,” Ihor Terehov, the Kharkiv mayor, explained.
According to Terehov, the residents of this building will get certificates for new apartments within the state’s eRecovery program (it’s a program mostly focused on providing financial aid to people whose homes were damaged or destroyed during the Russian invasion.)
Read more
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