Over USD 10 billion needed to rebuild Kharkiv - mayor

More than USD 10 billion is needed to rebuild damaged buildings and infrastructure in Kharkiv since the beginning of the war.

Mayor Ihor Terekhov said this in an interview with the Liga.net portal.

"In order to rebuild everything that the aggressor did, more than USD 10 billion is needed. Every hit means broken windows, crushed roofs, broken apartments. But the most important thing is the killed and wounded," Ihor Terekhov said.

According to the mayor, there are districts in Kharkiv where there are almost no surviving high-rise buildings. Russia purposefully attacks civilian objects and kills citizens.

"Russia is lying when it says that it strikes only military facilities. With each hit, we have more and more evidence that this is a real genocide. Northern Saltivka is the pain of the whole country. There is practically no high-rise building there that did not suffer," Terekhov said.

He said that despite the hostilities, the city is actively engaged in reconstruction in order to provide housing for those who lost their homes due to russian aggression.

"More than 150,000 Kharkiv residents remain homeless. In 2022, we were able to rebuild 200 houses. Last year - 67. This is a drop in the ocean," Terekhov said.

Terekhov also noted that almost all of the critical energy infrastructure in the city has been destroyed, and it is impossible to restore these capacities quickly.

"Already this heating season, we worked partly thanks to the fact that we built modular boiler houses in residential neighborhoods. Despite the blackout in the city, 40,000 consumers did not even feel it, because in preparation for winter we made alternative heating. The boiler houses that switched to generators worked," the mayor said.

As previously reported, the SSU detained a kindergarten worker who was correcting missile strikes on Kharkiv.