It feels like footage from Donbas or Kherson. Destruction is everywhere here. But this is an ordinary village near Kyiv – and a prosperous one at that. The village of Pohreby is located just outside Kyiv, north of the capital, and stands right next to CHPP-6 – one of Kyiv’s largest thermal power plants, supplying electricity and heat to nearly one million Kyiv residents living on the left bank of the Dnipro River.
As a result of several massive Russian missile strikes, the plant has had to halt operations multiple times, leaving several hundred of thousands of Kyiv residents without heating. Russia’s attempts to replicate Nazi Germany’s World War II blockade of Leningrad have so far failed – heat and electricity always return to Kyiv eventually, despite the delays.
Not least thanks to the residents of this village, most of whom work at CHPP-6.
One of them is Valeriy Herashchenko, who helps meet the need for constant repairs to the plant caused by Russian shelling. Every shift at work could be his last.
“I am a sixth-grade mechanic in the boiler-turbine workshop. You might make it to the bomb shelter during an air raid alert – or you might not… It depends on where you are working. Of course, we drop everything when the siren goes off and run, but it’s a 50/50 chance,” he said.
The Russians failed to destroy CHPP-6, but they did manage to hit Herashchenko’s house, which he had been building for nearly 20 years. This is all that remains – only the chimney of the solid-fuel boiler still points toward the sky.
“It was in the morning, around 7:15 a.m. Two missiles flew in. Both were shot down, but one of them fell on our house. Everything was destroyed. 188 square meters – we had just put it into operation in 2022… And my parents’ old house was badly hit as well; we are still repairing it,” says Herashchenko.
He says his own survival was a miracle.
“They had already written in the evening that there would be shelling, and my daughter and granddaughter asked me to stay with them. My little granddaughter asked her grandpa to sleep over. So I stayed, but at six in the morning I got up, went to the new house, and lit the solid-fuel boiler. My granddaughter woke up early – she had never woken up that early before – and started looking for me. My wife called me and said, ‘Come back, the granddaughter is looking for you.’ That was at 7:10. I had just arrived there and sat down on the couch with my granddaughter – and the explosion happened immediately… My granddaughter saved me,” the worker recalled.
There are many houses like Herashchenko’s here. Next to his house stands the destroyed house of a neighbor who likewise miraculously survived – something made him leave the blue room on the second floor and go downstairs just moments before it was hit.
However, luck does not always hold. The head of the community says that due to Russian strikes, the village has not only hundreds of damaged houses, but also human casualties.
“About 200 households have been affected, 194 officially recorded – and that’s just in half a year. Overall, during the war, there has been an enormous amount of destruction. Unfortunately, there were strikes when three people were killed by a Shahed drone in a single day – that is a huge tragedy. We will rebuild everything, that’s not the problem; human life is the most valuable. This month and the previous one, there were moments when houses literally lifted up and settled back down from the blasts. I myself live with three children near an infrastructure facility, and my children spend almost every night sleeping in the basement,” says Vitaliy Krupenko, head of the community.
But people do not leave their homes. One of them is 85-year-old Grandfather Mykola. A former employee of the design bureau of the Arsenal plant, he remains alone in a large two-story house that was set alight and partially destroyed by a nearby missile strike.
“Everything here is ruined; everything needs to be restored, starting with the plaster. The drywall has collapsed, the parquet floor is destroyed… Sometimes I light the fireplace so this room can dry out. There is a lot of work here. It hit from this side; the missile fell there in the garden – where the fence is crooked. Look at what’s left of the icons; these belonged to my great-grandmother,” Mykola said.
His wife left to wait out these hard times in Poland; his daughter lives with her husband. Panov stays in one of the surviving rooms of the house with his cat and dog. International funding helped install new windows, and the community authorities provide compensation for housing destroyed by Russian attacks.
“There is no lighting here, and electricity is only available in the lower levels, in the sockets. I have one small room where I live, but everything freezes – the water freezes, there is no toilet… I’ve brought in this water for myself – for drinking and washing my hands,” said Mykola.
Among those helping him and other locals is journalist, traveler, and lawyer Alex Frishberg. He also lives in the village, not far from the plant, and hears the sound of shelling most nights.
“Whenever Russian drones or missiles come bombing people in Kyiv, they bomb us first, every time they do it. A kilometer away we have our neighbours whose roofs are blown off, older people, who cannot take care of themselves. The point is that Russia is bombing the civilians, all of us, thinking that we will rebel against Zelensky and ask to be the part of Russia? No, we became stronger each bombing, we hate Russia each bombing. They don’t bomb us because they think that we will overthrow Zelensky, no, they bomb us because they are assholes, they always were assholes. Look at every single country around Russia! Look what they did in Georgia, Chechnya, Armenia, what are they doing in Africa and here in Ukraine! Russia is the most violent neighbor country that you can ever imagine,” says Frishberg.
Despite the destruction, people are rebuilding their homes and even smiling. The community itself, despite the shelling, is growing – local authorities are seeking international assistance and attracting investors, creating favorable conditions for business. Being located close to Kyiv, and with land cheaper than in the capital, allows them to look to the future with some optimism.
“We are located near Kyiv; we have development. Some enterprises open, some close, but economic development is significant. Despite everything, we have a budget surplus. Our budget is growing without state subsidies, thanks to creating comfortable conditions for business,” Krupenko said.
In Herashchenko’s words, the villagers are “all heroes, not just me.”
“It is impossible to break a Ukrainian!” he said.
You can find a recap of this story here.