Assignment: Ukraine - building back better
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 21 December 2023
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rebuilding Ukraine after the destruction inflicted by Russia will be a gigantic task. Foreign donors have pledged billions of dollars. But they want reassurances that the money will be properly spent, in a country which still has high levels of corruption. For Assignment Tim Whewell visits Bucha, near the capital Kyiv, site of some of the worst Russian atrocities, to see the beginning of reconstruction. A series of shocking reports by Ukrainian journalists into alleged misuse of rebuilding funds have forced local authorities in the area to explain themselves. But a new state reconstruction agency committed to transparency has now also started work in Bucha. And anti-corruption campaigners believe a new digital accounting and monitoring system they are developing in collaboration with the authorities will help turn Ukraine into a world beacon of openness. The government's slogan is "build back better." But what exactly does that mean? And can it be achieved?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Something mysterious, plagues County Mayo on the west coast of Ireland, and its legendary Gaelic football team. |
| 0:06.0 | Sometimes I think there's something sinister going on. |
| 0:09.0 | I believe in the curse. I think it's real. |
| 0:11.0 | Listen to the curious tale of the Mayo Curse on Amazing Sports Stories from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:18.0 | Search for Amazing Sports Stories wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:27.0 | Oh, the lift is working again. So the air's full of dust here. |
| 0:29.0 | We're going up, yep. |
| 0:32.0 | And we can't get out at this four, it's unsafe. |
| 0:38.0 | We get out here. |
| 0:39.0 | Okay, so we're stepping out. |
| 0:40.0 | We're now on the 8th, so we're on the 8th floor, gosh. So this is a 9-story housing block in Butcher. |
| 0:48.0 | Basically this block was caught between the two sides right on the line of the front. |
| 0:55.0 | Just before the occupation, our troops were on that side and the orcs on the other so the flats were destroyed by |
| 1:06.3 | shelling. Boucher, normally a quiet commuter town outside the Ukrainian capital Kyiv became a byword for horror in the spring of last year, |
| 1:17.0 | occupied for nearly a month by the Russians, Aix, as they're contemptuously called here. |
| 1:23.0 | Hundreds of its citizens were executed in cold blood |
| 1:27.0 | in what was perhaps the worst atrocity of the war. |
| 1:30.0 | But now, butcher is being rebuilt. |
| 1:32.8 | We are reinforcing the structure here, |
| 1:37.8 | replacing all the floors and the power supply. |
| 1:40.8 | Then the flats will be finished. |
| 1:43.0 | But restoration of this block of flats, supervised by Foreman Fihori Kulichenko, |
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