Men in hard hats enter a child’s bedroom decorated with pink wallpaper that features two bejeweled elephants, a little one and big one.
The workers quickly shovel mounds of rubble off the beige carpet and into wheelbarrows, then dump it down a makeshift chute. They leave only a dusty pile of children’s books before moving on to the next room.
With the roof mostly burned out of this apartment building on the outskirts of Kyiv, due to previous Russian strikes on the Ukrainian capital, the sun beats down on the volunteers as they work methodically to make the devastated homes livable again.
“I really feel we are unified now. We know Ukraine is our home and all Ukrainians understand we need to rebuild,” said Andriy Kopylenko, co-founder of the charity organization District 1.
It’s now more than 100 days since Russian troops invaded Ukraine. They initially attacked and occupied multiple Kyiv suburbs before the Kremlin withdrew its forces from around the capital to concentrate on the east of the country. Even as brutal street-by-street battles continue to rage there, residents in Kyiv say it is time to rebuild and return.
