Kharkiv is gradually turning into a city of pensioners and internally displaced persons: Svitlana Gorbunova-Ruban
Kharkiv is gradually turning into a city of pensioners and internally displaced persons. This was reported by Deputy Mayor Svitlana Gorbunova-Ruban at a meeting of the discussion series ‘What are the big cities of Ukraine preparing for’.
According to her, Kharkiv is currently home to more than 200,000 IDPs, including 27,000 children. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, many young and middle-aged people have left the city, leaving mostly the elderly.
Horbunova-Ruban recalled the work of municipal services with elderly residents at the beginning of the war. In March-April 2022, social service workers went round the apartment blocks.
“The problem was that there were entrances to high-rise buildings where only one family lived or only one apartment was occupied, and the rest were empty. There was no one to ask how many people were left, who they were, where to find them. We went from door to door, calling and knocking. And if someone answered – it could be a person or an animal, such as a dog or a cat – we did our best to open the door with the help of the State Emergency Service or the police. We took away those who were evacuated,” she said.
The deputy mayor also noted that the number of people taken care of by social services in Kharkiv has doubled. However, the number of social workers has decreased as some of them have left the city.
According to the mayor, Igor Terekhov, 1.3 million people live in Kharkiv now (1.4 million before the war). At the beginning of the war, Kharkiv residents evacuated en masse: in March 2022, about 300,000 people remained in the city. However, a significant number of residents later returned.
