By Tamar Jacoby
As donors and investors gather this week in Berlin for the Ukraine Recovery Conference, all eyes are on helping the besieged nation. In Mykolaiv, near the Black Sea, the Danish government assists by jump-starting local businesses, fighting corruption—and helping Ukraine shake off its Soviet economic legacy.
The damage is evident everywhere in Mykolaiv, once a bustling port and shipbuilding hub near the Black Sea, 85 miles east of Odesa. Russian and Ukrainian forces fought hand to hand in and around the city in March 2022, followed by eight months of relentless shelling by the frustrated invading army. In November, Ukrainian troops pushed the Russians out of range, and the invaders never made it to Odesa.
More than two years later, many of the windows in the working-class city are still covered with plywood. Parking lots are pocked with shell craters. There’s a gaping eight-story hole at the center of the empty regional administration building—a reminder of the missiles meant to assassinate popular Governor Vitalii Kim that killed 37 civil servants in late March 2022.
The city’s economic engine—the port—is idle. Russians still control the mouth of the channel that connects Mykolaiv to the Black Sea, and no cargo has come or gone since February 2022. The nearly 300-year-old town teems with displaced persons from southern Ukraine, but a quarter of the city’s prewar population of 480,000 has yet to return.
