Almost 160,000 buildings and structures in Ukraine were destroyed due to the war

In Ukraine, there are almost 160,000 buildings and structures destroyed due to Russian aggression, approximately 20,000 of them are multi-story buildings.

Such data were provided by the director of the state enterprise “State Research Institute of Building Structures”, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor Gennadiy Farenyuk.

According to him, the determination of the material damage caused by the Russian aggression to the citizens of Ukraine should begin with technical examinations. And it is very important that the methods used provide a reasonable and understandable result for experts.

At the same time, it is not always possible to rely on the research methods and tools that were used when surveying destroyed or damaged buildings in peacetime.

“Specialists constantly dealt with issues of buildings damaged as a result of man-made accidents or natural disasters. Our Institute has also been examining damaged buildings for decades. But now their number has increased thousands or tens of thousands of times. And it is one thing when it comes to damage due to the explosion of a fuel boiler, and quite another – in the case of a direct hit by a missile. According to statistics, almost 160 thousand buildings and structures in Ukraine were damaged due to the war.

Almost 20,000 of them are high-rise buildings. These are complex engineering structures. And we need an effective approach that will help to find out the extent of their damage. The most important thing is to determine objectively: to consider the building as completely destroyed or partially damaged, which is subject to restoration,” Fareniuk emphasized.

During the war, specialists of the Institute of Building Structures examined approximately 400 multi-story buildings. One important element of the survey is determining whether people can return to those parts of the building that have not suffered direct damage, and whether it is safe to continue using those properties.

The head of the scientific research institution admitted that experts often do not want to take responsibility and do not always make justified decisions about the demolition of buildings and the construction of new ones in their place.

“On the one hand, it is really much better to build something new on the site of many objects. But this requires huge costs and guarantees delays in solving the social problems of residents, who will have to wait for years for the construction of new housing, while the reconstruction of partially damaged buildings requires much less resources and time,” said Farenyuk.

All these nuances, according to him, should be taken into account when assessing the degree of damage to buildings and determining the damage caused to their owners and the cost of rebuilding or reconstruction.

The professor reminded that the first stage of the assessment is the inspection of the building, during which the damage is fixed and the percentage of the volume of the damaged structures is calculated compared to the area of ​​the entire building. The second stage is to determine the impact of damage on the stability and safety of the building as a whole: whether it is possible to restore the structure and by what technical means it can be done.

“This second level of examination is decisive in order to assess the material damage caused and calculate the future economic costs. Because everything can be restored, but it is not always advisable. After all, the economy is decisive,” Fareniuk is convinced.

According to estimates by the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE Institute), the direct damage caused to the infrastructure of Ukraine due to the full-scale Russian invasion exceeded $150 billion, almost $56 billion of which was the loss of the housing stock.