The City on a Wave

Fighting for Water, their city, and the country residents of Mykolaiv press on

The city of Mykolaiv has become a breaking point for the Russian Southern offense. If the city was to fall within the first weeks of the full-scale invasion the road to central Ukraine, as well as the much-desired path to Odesa, would be open to the brutal invading force of Russia. For Ukraine, the city and its residents are now a symbol of unwavering resistance and sacrifice.

This is a story about some of the residents of Mykolaiv who have been living, resisting, and helping others in the City on a Wave, as the official slogan of Mykolaiv goes.

Yurii and Svitlana Albeshchenko, 38 and 34 with their daughters Kristina ,12, and Alina, 13, have been living in the basement of a garage co-op for over 9 months. Their apartment building, which sits just about 500 meters from the garage didn’t have a basement suitable to be a bomb shelter, so the first night of the war they hid in the basement of this garage. Now the basement has beds that can sleep up to 15 people–they often have people staying over. And the garage itself is equipped for relatively comfortable living. “We’re improving all the time,” Yurii says laughing.

Mykolaiv was hit with a massive rocket attack on July 31, when Russia launched 42 rockets on the city, the family was sitting in the basement listening to the blasts and watching the concrete ceiling shake.
Both Svitlana and Yurii feel more comfortable here. The garage is equipped for the winter better than their apartment. It has clean drinking water, heating, and a generator. As a backup for heat, there is a wood-burning stove and a load of firewood.

“We’re not coming back until the war is over, it’s safer here,” Yurii says. A former policeman and long haul truck driver, he has been in Mykolaiv Territorial defense for about 6 months and awaits their unit's first deployment. Svitlana, a former event coordinator will wait for him in this very garage that has become their war-time home.

Mikhailo Fateev, 37, is the head of the volunteer center called The House of Officers, a building that had fallen into disrepair, which has become a gathering place for volunteers since the beginning of the war. Among the dark hallways and staircases with peeling paint, people are carrying boxes in and out, filling orders to deliver water, food, and medicine to the neediest.

The House of Officers became one of the first points of gathering for volunteers in Mykolaiv after February 24th. From the first day of the full-scale invasion, it became a hub to come and find a task to fulfill if you wanted to help out. On March 15th Mr. Fateev showed up on the doorstep and since then, never left. “It seemed like an ant house,” he recalls of his first impression. He saw people running around with a purpose or without one. The moment someone asks for help with something it’s addressed and the moment someone wants to help, they are given a task.

Since then the House of Officers became a registered volunteer organization, their main task today is to redistribute humanitarian aid, as well as assist civilians and the Army with any task at hand. For Mr. Fateev, a Mykolaiv native, The House of Officers became his second home and it is important to him that this place won’t be forgotten after the war. “I hope we will make a cultural center here,” he says.

For now, with creaking floors and a roof that is barely holding up, it’s a place to turn to for help or be helpful.

Svystun Artem, 41 is the artistic director of the Mykolaiv Academic Art Drama Theater. On September 22, 2022, a day before the long-anticipated reopening of the theater after a long pause caused by the war a missile landed right in the front courtyard of the theater damaging the building and taking out all of the windows on the wall facing the blast. The opening carried on as planned.

Ironically, before the full-scale invasion, the theater carried the name of Academic Art Theatre of Russian Drama, focusing primarily on Russian classics. After the neighboring country tried to invade Ukraine, the theater troupe decided to drop the name and renamed itself Mykolaiv Academic Art Theatre.

The plays are held in a small basement space. Bombings are still frequent in Mykolaiv and the only way to provide a theater experience while maintaining relative safety is to use a tiny downstairs stage as the main venue, while the beautiful main stage, with three levels of balconies awaits the return of the big crowds.

Alyona Martynova, 39 is an artist and a teacher’s assistant for special needs children. She started creating murals in Mykolaiv during the war. She wanted to show her fellow residents that life goes on, and that there are reasons to stay. Mykolaiv, a city that throughout the entire war has been a key point of Ukrainian resistance, and one that has been bombed relentlessly by Russia, has a fair share of residents that are frightened of everything. And some people, walking by and seeing her working expressed their concern that a mural l would just be another target because it would only annoy the enemy seeing Ukrainians celebrating their resilience by creating uplifting artworks.

But many have stopped to express joy and support for what she and her partner, Dmytro Slipukha, are doing. “And seeing people like this makes it all worthwhile,” Alyona says.

Hanna Butenko, 27, is a volunteer and a head of the non-profit organization Helping Ukraine. Her volunteer center is located in a warehouse in the most Southern district of Mykolaiv. Korabel’niy district, named after its shipbuilding capabilities has suffered immensely throughout the months of occupation of Kherson because of its proximity to the front line, which made it vulnerable to Russian short-range rapid artillery systems.

She started her volunteer work on day one of the full-scale invasion, in her one-bedroom apartment. Now her operation is housed in a giant warehouse. Every day the trucks come in carrying supplies from all over Ukraine and other European countries. Her job is to redistribute what is most needed. Lately, it is wood-burning stoves and blankets. Tragically, there has been an increased demand for pregnancy tests from clinics working in recently deoccupied territories as women who have been sexually abused by Russian soldiers seek medical attention.

Butenko was one of the few volunteers traveling south throughout the duration of the occupation of Kherson and after its liberation. The Ukrainian government is unable to address all immediate needs, and volunteers like herself are filling these gaps. “When I visit our boys in a dugout and look around, and I see: here are my blankets, here are my sleeping bags, here is our canned food. And you understand, this dugout is totally dependent on our warehouse…”

Mykola Logvinov, 44, is the head of Mykolaiv Oblteploenergo, whose job is to provide heating to Mykolaiv. This year his job description changed a bit, starting with drilling for water in the middle of the city streets in order to get drinking or technical water and to construct roadblocks. A bulletproof vest is always in the backseat of his car, a new habit developed after working under fire for the past few months.

For the first two months, Mr. Logvinov and his team worked in the office. “We had to be inventive,” he said about that time. “And we wanted people to see that we are here, we are working, and we are not leaving anywhere.”

Mykolaiv was cut out from water early in the war, being that the main supply of water comes from the Kherson region which was occupied by Russia. Mykolaiv’s government came up with a solution: pump salt water from the river, filter it, and run it through the system’s water grid. For drinking water, there are several solutions, one of them provided by Mr. Logvnov’s branch. Each time they drill for water to be used in the system for heating, they would install a distribution point with filtered water for drinking where residents can come and fill up water bottles with drinking water. At this point, Oblteploenergo has installed over 20 refill points.

Though the city of Mykolaiv has installed many wells and equipped water points where residents can access drinkable water, it still isn’t enough.

Evhenii Korolkov, 39, a volunteer and civil activist, is helping to install these much-needed drinking water stations in the city. Volunteers have been integral in carrying the load and Evhenii is one of them. By raising money, finding grants, and tapping private donors, they have equipped 3 new points with wells and elaborate filtrations systems, and 4 more are scheduled to open before the end of the year.

Evhenii is an important link in a complicated chain of volunteers, organizations, and communal efforts to make projects like this happen. This particular water point was built with the costs provided by an Italian charity organization and a Kyiv-based volunteer group called Rishuchi, who collected donations by doing a bike ride across the country.

“Why am I doing this...”, says Evhenii, “Seems like the right thing to do”.

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