'Rebuilding is resistance': How Bucha is springing back to life

Standing on the crumbling roof of a house, dozens of workers hammer in unison. Around them, cranes, bulldozers and trucks work frantically to repair roads and buildings destroyed by Russian artillery.

- Lorenzo Tondo

It is hard to believe that this noisy construction site is in Yablonska Street, in the town of Bucha, in the north of Kyiv, at the precise crossroads where a year ago the bodies of dozens of civilians, brutally killed by Russian soldiers, were strewn over more than a kilometre, some with their hands bound behind their backs.

Ukraine has already repaired, and in many cases fully rebuilt, many of the sites destroyed by Moscow, including bridges, roads and government buildings. It is only the beginning of what Kyiv has described as the largest rebuilding effort since the second world war and perhaps the most expensive in history, with an estimated cost of half a trillion dollars. But managing this unprecedented influx of money in a country with a long history of corruption will bring challenges, experts say.

"Under the Marshall plan, the US programme that provided economic assistance to restore the infrastructure of postwar Europe, Washington contributed $13.3bn in aid to 16 countries," said Donald Bowser, the founder of Support to Ukrainian Recovery Initiative, an NGO focused on recovery projects in formerly occupied areas of Ukraine. "That's approximately $150bn in today's dollars. Rebuilding Ukraine could cost the west four or five times as much. Nobody has ever invested all this money for the reconstruction of a single country."

When, early in July last year, Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the reconstruction of war-torn Ukraine would begin before the end of hostilities with Russia, many western leaders were sceptical. The idea of starting to rebuild a country while its cities continued to be devastated by Russian bombs seemed foolish as well as dangerous. And yet, Zelenskiy has been as good as his word.