The war in Ukraine is continuing and, at the moment, the country is facing a new emergency. Thousands of people were indeed forced to flee their homes after the collapse on Monday of a major hydroelectric dam on the Dnipro River, in the city of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region.
The dam was destroyed by a bomb placed in one of the turbine halls on top of it and Kyiv declared the dam was blown up by Russia in a desperate attempt to ward off a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Experts monitoring the dam state the structure may have also failed by itself, but mainly because it was put under stress for days by the Russians that allowed the reservoir to fill to record levels in previous weeks.
As water level dramatically rose in the surrounding areas, people had to abandon their homes. Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskiy declared that the devastation was an "environmental bomb of mass destruction".
The ecological impact of this disaster on the region will indeed be catastrophic, with far-reaching consequences for Ukraine's long-term hydroelectric power generation capacity.
Additionally, it will affect water supplies to the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as well as Crimea, with implications for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant located 200km upstream. As the reservoir drains away, there is indeed a risk that the nuclear power plant could lose access to water for cooling.
While this is an attack on a civilian infrastructure, the consequences make us think about WarWilding. This term was coined last year by Jasper Humphreys, director of programmes for the Marjan Study Group in the department of war studies at King’s College London. The word indicates tactically manipulating nature in warfare by creating or destroying a natural habitat (let's keep it in mind as the term may end up becoming a word of the year in 2023). While, as just stated, the 30-metre-high dam that held a reservoir of 18 cubic kilometres of water, was an architectural rather than a natural feature, its destruction will have short and long-term consequences on nature.
While at the moment the global attention is focused on the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam, we shouldn't forget other parts of the country, such as Irpin.
A photographic exhibition at Milan's Triennale this weekend is actually focusing on the town.
Organised during Milan Architecture Week (until 11th June), "Irpin, Ukraine: Past, Present and Future" (June 9 - 10), is a visual reportage of a city that last year was at the centre of some of the most violent attacks by the Russian army.
In early March 2022 Russian troops intent on conquering Kyiv took hold of the town. As columns of tanks sped towards Kyiv, expecting to capture it within a matter of weeks, Irpin, located on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, became the dramatic theatre of a violent Russian incursion.
Around 300 civilians, many of them women, were killed there - some were shot dead, others died by artillery fire or starved to death.
The brutality of the Russian occupation was clear from the start in Irpin: most crimes happened in mid-March and in the final days before the Russian withdrawal when the Ukrainian army regained control of the area.
It was estimated that 76 percent of the city was destroyed: videos showed the aftermath of weeks of fighting and Russian bombardment with bodies littering the streets, civilian cars riddled with bullets and destroyed buildings. Because of the atrocities in the community, Irpin was designated as a heroic city.
Pushkinska St, Lermontova St, Davidchuka and Vygovskogo St all bore the scars of a brutal occupation, but the residents of some of these streets soon returned to try to clean up and rebuild.
Curated by the Irpin Reconstruction Summit (IRS), the exhibition at the Triennale looks at destruction and encourages to think about reconstruction.
The dereliction you are confronted with in these images is shocking: many of the houses, residential complexes and schools featured in the photographs are half or completely destroyed with exploded windows with shards still hanging from their frames while curtains blow in the wind. You can spot broken plastic chairs at a bus stop, monumental staircases covered in debris and rubble and a car cemetery that burned down during the bombings.
The destruction of the buildings reflects the violence against civilians: these structures, silent and half-burned down evoke the terror of shootings and summary executions and of people being held by force in basements.
At times, a passer-by is photographed staring at the war ruins, or a mother and a child are pictured as they swiftly pass in front of a school that doesn't exist anymore, reminding us about children who died during the war or who have lost their families, their homes and their safe spaces, from playgrounds and parks to schools.
But the pictures are also a way to try and conjure up a new vision to rebuild the city, responding to particular urgencies and needs, facilitating dialogue between different actors involved, from the municipality to stakeholders.
The images also prompt visitors to compare Irpin to other experiences in Ukraine and to other countries that have been facing other types of emergencies as well, including Italy that, in the last fifteen years, has dealt with deadly earthquakes and floods. Beyond the tragedy there is the desire for hope and rebirth that the citizens of the Ukrainian city are demonstrating and, to this end, Milan's Triennale will be hosting a day of lectures on 10th June (from 9.30am to 3.00pm) about case studies and guidelines for the reconstruction in Ukraine in collaboration with the IRS.
The case of the city of Irpin and the activities of the Irpin Reconstruction Summit thus become an opportunity for a very broad reflection, highlighting the importance of shared knowledge and experiences and the promotion of sustainable and innovative solutions at the local, national, and European levels that, extending beyond geographical boundaries, can positively shape the future of the city.
Image credits for this post
All images in this post are part of the exhibition "Irpin, Ukraine: Past, Present and Future", courtesy La Triennale / IRS
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